The Book I Did NOT Want to Write

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I consider myself to be a rather happy person — generally more about rainbows than rainclouds. I delight in witty banter, snarky humor, and giving the occasional impromptu theatrical performance. Raised on the likes of the Carpenters, Simon & Garfunkel, and about every musical known to Broadway, I am a fire-breathing, poetry-reciting, singing, dancing, card-carrying Thespian who was voted “Most Friendly” waaaaaay back in high school. Bottom line: you’re more likely to hear me laughing than crying. (Unless I’m watching something really true … but that’s a story for another time.)

So as you read my most recent work, Ephemeral, you may wonder at the incongruity between my merry personality and my book’s serious themes. There’s a perfectly good explanation for this disparity:

I did not want to write this book.

Nope! I wanted to write something light and fun — like murder mysteries.

Seriously! Of all the ways to die in this crazy world, getting cleverly killed by a mastermind of intrigue is waaaaay down the list of likely probabilities. Both globally and in the U.S., murder doesn’t even make the top ten causes of death. That basically puts murder in the “make believe” category for me.

*Disclaimer: I do not wish to discount the very real pain survivors feel when they lose a loved one through violence. My heart goes out to those who’ve gone through such loss.*

But as a writer of imaginary crimes, I think of murder mysteries as entertaining literary romps leading to the encouraging conclusion that evil cannot hide forever. There’s comfort in the idea of justice — especially when the real world can be so unjust. But when no one wanted to invest in my mystery series about two sister sleuths who solve crimes with their complementary visual and auditory strengths, my agent asked me to write something else.

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Something else?

The only something else I had was a short story based on the concept of accelerated aging — a short story which had lost the writing contest I’d written it for, I may add. But it was very different from my mysteries, so I thought I’d expand it.

So why didn’t I just write a happy-go-lucky aging story, then? After all, I am the author. No one’s forcing me to type into the wee hours of the morning. I’m in charge. This is my show. I can say whatever I want, can’t I?

Well … here’s where the writing process gets a bit tricky. At a certain point, a conscientious writer has to cease leading and start following their own work.

What do I mean by that? For starters, all the best fiction is anchored in reality. I once attended a writer’s conference where Patricia Sprinkle, author of the Thoroughly Southern Mysteries series, advised authors to become vampires — to suck up the details of real people and places and inject them into their work. (After all, you can always change the names so you don’t offend people.)

Despite the fact Ephemeral is technically science fiction/speculative fiction, I had to do a lot of uncomfortable research in order to write it honestly. As a sociology major in college, it didn’t take much imagination to extrapolate what could happen fifty - seventy-five years from now as global birthrates currently plummet. Fewer young people = fewer caregivers who can support the longer-lived elderly = bad news for society when all the caregivers get taken. What happens to those without support? Boom! — the premise for my story.

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Suddenly, I’m looking into all kinds of depressing things like dementia, euthanasia, suicide, etc. But even more than that, I’m listening to the real life stories from my older friends caring for their dependent parents. Heavy stories. Concerning stories. And I’m getting angry.

(As an aside, anger is a wonderful writing motivator. But I’ll talk more about such things in future posts.)

I start to write. I get the train moving. But somewhere along the line, momentum takes over. I can no longer stop the story or choose a new plot now I’ve committed to this particular track. I’ve traded the engineer’s cap for a passenger seat — one way back in the caboose.

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Technically, I type the words. But if they aren’t in line with the rest of the story, they simply lack credibility. It’s like turning your hero into the villain at the last minute — it simply doesn’t work, and your readers will throw the book across the room.

Backspace, backspace, backspace.

Ephemeral has taken me places I never would have wanted to go and has made me see things in myself I never would have wanted to see. It’s not always been an easy ride, but I think I’m the better for it. And I hope to share more about my writing journey in future posts.

So I hope you’ll take a ticket and find a seat on this Ephemeral train even if it goes through a few valleys. But you know what they say; without the valleys, there are no mountains.

Thanks for reading.

Source:

Cronkleton, Emily. Medically reviewed by Jenneh Rishe. “The Biggest Causes of Death in 2020.” Medical News Today.com. Jan. 30, 2022. Accessed March 24, 2022. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/death-statistics-by-cause-2020

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So what do you think?

Anyone else ever have a project take on a life of its own? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments below!