Return to the glass house
I guess I'm going to be jumping back and forth between two novel projects
I’m back in the glass house novel, affectionately known around here as WBTC.
I wasn’t sure what I would find when I opened the Scrivener file. I hadn’t even looked at it since August, when I paused to start the pond novel. I’ve been feeling pulled back toward it lately, but I was also a little afraid of the mess I’d left myself.
Turns out, it’s a lot closer to a full first draft — and a lot better — than I thought back then. I was so close to it and so stuck that I couldn’t see the next step. Now, after spending the last eight months in a project that is difficult in a different way, the solutions seem so obvious.
It also feels like a break, in the same way the pond novel felt like a break back then. Finally! Back in first-person POV. Finally! Just one perspective, not three. It’s funny how at the time I was excited to move from three timelines to one and now I’ll take all the timelines if I can just get back in the first person. 😂 All of these writing challenges are relative, and all of them are tricky. And now I know both devils so on any given day I can choose the one that’s more fun.
Yep, I’m still in the pond novel. Anna and I met on Wednesday night to talk through next steps in that project. I think I’ll be jumping back and forth between them for a while, until one is done, I guess. Wish me luck.
Reading recs:
This interview with Natalie Merchant in advance of the release of her new album is full of wisdom and grace. She is at the top of my list of our national treasures.
This interview with Chelsea Hodson on The Lives of Writers made me want to hit up an early 2000s Kinko’s and make a zine.
I just finished reading an advanced copy of Isabel’s Zapata’s In Vitro: On Longing and Transformation, translated by Robin Myers, and it was excellent. It comes out in May and if you loved Rivka Galchen’s Little Labors and Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness (both comps for my nonfiction manuscript also!), this is your sign to preorder.
