Day Eighty-Eight: Starting to Understand my Book

So you know that moment where, after months to years of plodding through an idea that doesn't seem to stick, you write a scene that is succint, clear, and meaningful, and you go, "Oh."

That was Saturday. 

I'm heading toward the end of my book. I've written the end of this book way too many times, but it hasn't stuck before. So I got up early, went to my dining room table, and wrote a scene. I said, "Huh. That was a good scene." So I wrote the next scene. I showed it to Alex. He said, "Huh, That's a good scene." So I wrote the next scene. And then I went back to Paradise Bakery and snapped a shot of the weird looking ball fountain outside, and I wrote another scene. 

It's a scene that, I think, holds all the things I could have hoped for it to hold.

By January of my first year (2015), I was about to throw it away. The great Nancy Holder listened to my reasons why I didn't want to. She then picked it up, dusted it off, and handed it back to me.

She then guided me through five months' worth of re-outlining and reworking the plot, and through that, I arrived at this Saturday. 

Back in January, I told Nancy I wanted to write this book because of three reasons: the people I loved, the people I'd lost, and the people I'd lost to death. 

I keep coming back to these people in the characters, in the feelings I get when I write in this world. My love for Alex and how that love is still strong, even considering how much we've been through.

Then those who are no longer here. My friend who went too early for no damn reason, and how quick it all went and how I don't know how to make sense of it, comfort anyone on the subject, or reconnect with their memory without getting depressed. 

And Grandma. Grandma is all over this book.

I don't mean to write this in their memories. I don't mean to incorporate it. For example, one of the scenes yesterday was a scene between the two main characters. I read it to Alex. And Alex and I both agreed that it was, in an alternate universe sort of way, a paralleled event of something that happened between us. 

I write fiction. But any fiction writer knows that art is an imprint of that artist's life in that moment. 

And I'm starting to actually like this imprint.