You could say I’m between projects these days. A few weeks ago, I finished a draft of a manuscript that consumed my life for months. I always thought I’d be one of those writers who immediately starts a new project, seconds after typing “the end.” I didn’t even have to start a new project; I’d been working on another story last fall, before the marathon novel rewrite started in January. I could just go back to that, I thought. No sweat.
What I hadn’t counted on was the intense emotional rollercoaster of the last few weeks of the rewrite. By the end of it I was kind of a disaster. I wasn’t sleeping well, couldn’t play nicely with others, found myself weeping for no reason… it was ugly. By the end of it, I’m fairly certain my loved ones thought about locking me up. And when I finally finished, I found that I couldn’t get my head out of the manuscript. Emotionally, I was still there, still with those characters, still mulling over their choices and characterization. Switching to a new project, I realized, was not going to be nearly as easy as closing out one document and opening another on my laptop.
I kept in mind the words of Virgina Woolf: “As for my next book, I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.” I wanted that too. I didn’t want to take to my next book like a laborer to a trying task; I didn’t want to be writing merely to have written. I wanted the new book – in the beginning, at least – to be as enticing as first love. There will be plenty of time in the middle to feel like a bricklayer. Still, I was impatient to get back to writing, simply because I need to be writing to be okay.
How could I get back into the heads of characters I abandoned almost a year ago?
How could I help that pear to ripen? This weekend it hit me: research. Normally I stay far, far away from research. If I need to know something, I text someone smarter than me and ask them. “What was the name of the first dog in space?” “Is there a technical name for the backing up noise that trucks make?” I know myself well enough to know that the second I go to google something, I’m opening the door to hours of happy procrastination. Dangerous indeed.
But trying to get into the heads of my characters, to find the doorway back into the world I left last fall, to rediscover the themes and big questions that will drive the story – this is not google-able research. It’s more elastic, more abstract. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, but I think I’ll know it when I see it.
I started calling people, asking questions. “What made you want to be a director?” “What appeals to you about this medium?” “Tell me about how you started playing piano.” I asked questions about what they loved, and they told me fascinating stories. I talked to a filmmaker, a good friend who I see on a regular basis, and learned a lot about film and about my friend. I talked to a musician, someone I’ve known since the fourth grade, and learned about who he was when (I thought) I knew him best, twelve or so years ago. I talked to a film studies major, also known as my sister, and heard about classes and papers I never thought to ask about when we were both in college. My sister told me what she thinks is the most beautiful image in the world. My filmmaker friend told me what he wanted to be when he was a little kid. My musician friend told me about being surprised by other people, the connections music can make.
It was awesome. I took pages and pages of notes, didn’t say too much, asked tons of questions. Kept saying “one more question” and then going for another half hour. At the end of the night, the world in my mind had grown shadows, layers, depth I never began to imagine when I first started playing with this story years ago. I started thinking about every single person I know, and wondered what I’d hear if I called every single one of them and listened, for an hour, to them talk about what they love best. And though the pear’s not quite ripe yet, it’s well on its way, and I’m starting to feel again the intoxication of starting a new book.
