Summer passes into fall. Birthdays come and go. A dear friend is stricken ill and dies all too suddenly. A baby is born. A book is finished.
Some urge pushes you to your storage unit to begin to divest; you swore you would. All those boxes and bins: notebooks, journals, photographs, mementos; nothing of monetary value. All sentimental, emotional, what if’s…. You bring three boxes home to go through, swear you’ll toss or give away or shred. Promise you’ll record all those old CDs onto your computer.
But this box:
Here is the long-ago novel you put away while you wrote its sequel. You open the box and swear you can smell the muddy water of the fishing camp where the story is set, swear you hear Ruby Diamond’s whiskey voice singing, “Crazy,” and Louise and Lilly arguing on the screened-in porch. You remember how much Anna misses her daddy and Roseann, lost in the woods.
Should you?
What about you? Would you?
It sounds interesting! It is something very big to have a book finished! 🙂
Thanks for your comment, Alexis. And tell the truth, I don’t know if a book is ever really “finished.” I think we just stop rewriting. I still want to make changes in the very first book I wrote nevermind about the “temptation in a storage bin” (which I am going back to soon.)
Sounds like the muse calling, Judy.
I’m thinking so, too, Stacey. What kind of messages is yours sending these days?
The characters are glad you remember and care about them! Put the box under your bed, a table or desk and retrieve it again after you’ve finished your other novel and Wild Women marketing plan. Opening that box when the time is right will give you something else to look forward to.
This is another case of “whoa, Nellie,” Jill. Too many temptations. First Louise and Sarita and Johnny Midnight, then… back to the lake.
-its all about peace of mind.decisions and time.sometimes we spend the whole day thinking about one thing.as “the mark on the wall” by virginia woolf and sometimes we have to be mindless .having feelingless hearts of stones waiting for sth or someone to melts it.
for me i would while wouldnt. its a vast upheaval of matters.u see we still have that kind of arrogance i think thats inherited or inborn.we carry on handling big matters while letting the small ones.we honour the big the rich the beautiful and the strong while neglecting the small.humiliating the poor .ignoring the bad and beating the weak .
finally its a matter of time and reality
Time and Reality. You’re so right narimene. Right now is not the time to return to this novel. Finish the other first. (I do wonder though, how this one reads after all these years.) Thanks for checking in.
Abso-completely yes. I would. I am. The novel I started 28 years ago or so is now two-thirds of the way done since Christmas when it called to me from the detritus of the ages. It grabbed me right in the viscera which wrapped around me and the chair and held me there until I figured out how I would treat it.
And then there was a rap on the screen and in marched all the characters from another deleted novel. They fit better here.
Sorting storage rooms is like sorting through a life, first cousin to digging around in Great Aunt Agatha’s hope chest and finding ….
And all those notebooks, Linda. If you don’t hear from me for awhile, come looking. By the way, this novel is the prequel to the one I am going to pick up again. Who knows, maybe I can get a two-book deal and will get to go back to this one, too. (ha!)