Notes on a Writing Life 41
September 14 2022
Dear All,
I wonder how many other writers have experienced this: characters who just refuse to go away. The book is finished, the conclusion drawn – and yes, that really was the ending you wanted. But if for some reason, the characters go on, talking to you in the night, presenting new aspects of themselves, insisting on their right to live?
‘The lie, the look, the grief are without permanence.
The watch continues to tick where the story stops.’
Mavis Gallant, one of my favorite authors, wrote that. The watch continues to tick. As it does in life, as long as you are on this earth. But what to do about it? Let them have another book? Write a series? Go on listening to these people you thought you had said goodbye to? When I was young I read a book called ‘What Katy Did’ followed by another ‘What Katy Did Next.’ Admirable titles – they tell you just what the book is going to be about.
Paris Journal, by Mavis Gallant.
As a very young beginning writer, spurred on by the Katy books and Anne of Green Gables among many others, I had a hard time getting my characters to do anything. They stood there, described in detail, like those paper dolls waiting to be dressed, refusing to move. We’re here, they seemed to say: now what?
Now, I have people who won’t stop moving and talking, who invade my mind when I’m doing something else. Who won’t shut up and go away. They seem to want their continuing stories to be told. Fanciful, I know. Maybe even a bit crazy. But there they are.
I don’t know what I’ll let them do – the jury’s still out. In my last novel ‘Without Her’, their friend died, choosing her own death. What happened to them after that? What do you do after you’ve seen your friend die? When life in all its contradictory ways still goes on? As yours does, as mine does, until it doesn’t anymore.
Meanwhile, happily, I’ve just signed the contract for my newest novel ‘Bone Whispers’ with Epicenter Press in Washington State. It’s a mystery of sorts, set partly in the years after World War 2, and will be out sometime in 2024. I’m delighted that it’s going to have a life – that those people, other familiars I lived with for so long, will be telling their stories in the light of day.
Thanks for reading,
Affectionately, Ros