Writing/Not Writing

November 2006A therapist once told me that research has discovered the fact that writing, at least for those who do it day after day, is addictive. It is, apparently, one of those activities, like exercise, that releases some kind of chemical or hormone to activate the brain’s pleasure center, the one that says, “More! More! More!”I’ve always known she was right.When I’m writing, my days fall into place. They simply are, abundant and ripe. All that fuels my stories has weight and meaning and a right to exist, even old wounds, even fresh grief.

My 60th book recently came out . . . and the 61st followed soon after. I had to stand in front of the shelf in my study that holds my books and count to come up with those numbers. Just think of all the forests destroyed in my name! Think, too, of the thousands of readers, some of them touched, some of them bored, nearly all of them forever unknown to me. Has the touching been deep enough, important enough to justify the paper spent? I will never know.All I can know is that, day by day, writing those 61 books has given me pleasure.For weeks stretching into months now I have been between major projects. I have had some short nonfiction pieces to do, part of my Wonders of America series. Those feel so easy as almost to be cheating. I read and read and read for about a week. Then I sit down to write about 200 words plus some interesting facts at the end, and I’m done. I almost feel guilty when I cash the check . . . almost. But in the brief process I never move into that place I long for, the one where work and pleasure are indistinguishable from one another. It’s simply work, good, solid work.My days are busy, over busy. I’ve had galleys coming back and revisions to do, none of them deep enough to feel like real writing. I’ve had lectures to deliver, planes to climb onto, strange hotel rooms to sleep in. Letters from readers to answer and e-mails, endless e-mails. I’m grateful for the capacity to send and receive e-mails but sometimes feel consumed by the barrage of voices pulling at me each day. I’ve had students to teach and Advisory Committee work to do for Vermont College. And I do all this while in free fall, which is the mode I always go into when I’m not writing.Three different projects rattle in my brain. I bounce back and forth between them at a rapid rate. Two of them are sequels, something I have never even considered doing before.One would be a sequel to Runt. I have been researching wolves again, working my way back inside the forest and the pack. I even know the title for that sequel. It would be Singer, of course. And I have scraps and bits of the story. I know the piece I always have to know before I can begin, exactly where Singer will be when the story ends. What I haven’t yet found is the voice, the rush of energy that will carry me past the first difficult pages.The other sequel, if I write it, would be to On My Honor. For twenty years young readers, dissatisfied with the book’s open ending, have begged for a sequel. They want to wake up with Joel the next morning. They want to attend Tony’s funeral. They want to see what will happen to Joel when he goes back to school without his friend.Sometimes they try a hand at writing the sequel themselves. Some of them, recognizing the power only a writer has, bring Tony back to life.Even my Clarion editor once asked me for a sequel to On My Honor. But my answer, whoever asks, has always been the same. No. My imagination has never wanted to go beyond Joel, held in his father’s love, waiting for sleep to come. That scene completes the story I set out to write. I had nothing more to say. Sometimes I have been sorry that I didn’t spell out the climax more clearly, that I didn’t bring Tony’s body back for the readers to grieve over and release, but in any case I was done.Lately, though, as I live my own son’s dying, I have discovered that I, too, am waking with Joel the morning after Tony’s death. What would he do? Go in search of Tony, of course. He would no more accept the reality of his friend’s drowning than many of my readers have. And thus a new story begins to unfold . . . slowly, slowly. A way to give meaning to my grief.The third story is still almost entirely amorphous. I have an April 1st deadline for another ghost story for Stepping Stones Mysteries, The Green Ghost. I can see a girl, probably from just post World War II, in love with a green coat. I can see the green coat. It has a velveteen hat and collar and muff and large, velveteen buttons. I know, too, how the girl will die to become my ghost.And I know something about the modern girl who will come across the ghost. Something, but not enough. What I don’t yet have is the way the two stories will intersect. That is the secret, always, of ghost stories, to bring two entirely distinct stories together.And so, instead of writing, I count the books already on the shelf. I gaze once more at the marvelous photos by Stan Tekiela in Baby Bear Discovers the World, book 60. I punch the button and watch the lights twinkle in Christmas Lights, my 61st.But the place the writing comes from is still and waiting. I am not quite empty, but certainly not yet ready to pour myself out into another book.Sometimes it feels as though I’ll never be ready again.Sometimes it feels as though I’m just about to open my heart and begin.