A few feet behind my back fence, there’s a stream. It’s not much to look at - the banks crowded with weeds often waist or shoulder high, the banks themselves so steep that you never actually see the stream when looking out the window or across the fence. The south side of the whole development is bordered by this stream, and, across the stream is another development. I hear the kids over there playing in the summer and spring. Today, that stream is under flash flood warning. I’ve done what I can to prepare the house and grounds - put emergency supplies in the car, thought about high places I could stow valuable things if I need to evacuate.
In the meantime, I put the possible (but unlikely) emergency out of my head by working. My muse has been problematic lately - filling my head with scenes that MUST be written until 1...2...3 in the morning, then waking me at 6 with more to write. It’s the right kind of problem to have as a writer, but, one does miss deep, unbothered sleep. The other problem is that I have two manuscripts scattered in not-so-neat piles across my desk. One is the story, still unfinished (though full in my head) that keeps me up nights, the other is the near-final draft of a book written some years ago, and revised over the last couple of years, now nearing publication. They are very different stories - one is the story of the multi-generation impact on a family of a mining accident, and the other is a story of one woman’s struggle with her relationships with other women.
The mining story is the one keeping me up nights, the voices and secrets of this family so real, so insistent on being written. I have to trust that process - just open, let the words go on paper, not worry about anything but how the story moves. The other manuscript is finished, but not finished - requiring careful attention to every word, every passage, every spelling - the last and oh-so-important edit before publication. Two VERY different processes, both of which I am working on at the same time. And, given the situation in my house today, I kept having the thought that they were, each, like a river.
Perhaps the same river. The mining story the raging floodwaters, giving you no choice but to get wet, to immerse, to be carried along, and the other the mouth of the river where it joins the sea - each drop coming finally, comfortably home to the sea of origin. A nice analogy, but what does that make me, the writer? If I’m in a boat, I have to, for stories like the first, hang onto the sides and just ride the current, but, at the mouth of the river, before it comes home, my net comes out, fishing as carefully as I’m able for any detritus I don’t want the story to carry out to sea.
I want to write like the river, especially the river today - lashed with rain, swelling with the power of the cold water, rushing along to the place all rivers go. I don’t really want to be weilding the net, but, as I actually DO that work, the river and all it’s travels become more real. Each word fished out, each misplaced comma removed, each scene cleaned becomes clearer, more essential. And it is odd, too - pleasantly odd - how, as I do this work on two separate and very different stories, in a real way they become one. The heartaches, the secrets, the pains that drive each of the people in the mining story are the same, in every way that counts, as those that drive the woman dealing with her internal struggles over friendship, betrayal, and guilt. It is, all of it, one river.
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NOTE: I don’t get many comments published on this blog, but I frequently get messages via email or Facebook from people who’ve read here. For all of you - first, thank you for sharing your thoughts and appreciation with me, and, second, please do not worry - if the stream rises, it rises. I’m prepared either way.
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Look for “Locus of Memory” (the manuscript currently in editing) to be available on both Amazon and Nook in late December or early January. There will also, for two weeks prior to release, be an opportunity to get the book for free on BookGrabbr - watch for notices on Facebook, Twitter, and my website.
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Find me on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/judy.c.mckenzie or my Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/Judith-Mikesch-McKenzie-306271749432891/
Or visit my website at: http://www.judithmckenzie.com/
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