Friday October 20th

Picking up the threads

Dear Gentle Readers,

welcome to another edition of my foolhardy attempt to write about writing a novel while writing the novel.

I’m a confirmed procrastinator who moves best when there is a fire under my ass, in particular, since covid 1 left me with attention disorder-like issues and covid 2 gifted¹ problems getting moving in the morning, the cortisol that is supposed to wake one up apparently curled up miserably in my adrenal glands, unwilling to face the day. With a bit of salutary pressure expected, this past couple of weeks was a period when I expected to get a lot done on the novel.

Fall colours. By Carlyn Zwarenstein.

But of course, as I mentioned on Sunday, I’ve found it hard to focus on anything but the news since October 7th, with an ongoing series of bad news days, each worse than the last, a deadly, horrendous massacre being followed by what by any ordinary interpretation of the term should be described as genocidal retaliation. I don’t really think there is anything more important than what’s going on in Gaza right now, both for the well-being of the entire world and, more pressingly, because hundreds of thousands of innocent children have been gradually dying of dehydration, and injured patients have been receiving surgery with no anesthetic at all over the past week, and people are resorting to drinking saltwater, while the US and others with influence in this situation refuse to even use the word ‘ceasefire’.

I have had work to do, articles that, unlike most of the journalism and books I’ve written in the last twenty years that focus on power and inequities, instead indulge in some of my deeper but less morally-engaged passions, writing about human evolution, primates, biodiversity, cognition—topics that stir the great child-like questions and feelings of pure wonder. Those articles have trundled along slowly through all this, while feeling simultaneously (1) like a reprieve from reality, (2) like an affirmation that this is the kind of thing all people should be able to turn their attention to—big beautiful lazy questions, rather than intolerable practical questions of how to stay alive, or whether to drink saltwater. And (3) like a travesty of fake importance, busywork designed to distract from the aforementioned ongoing horror.

The reason I expected to feel a welcome sense of panic relating to my novel, currently called The Escape Artist (a title that might have to change given the number of other books that already use the formulation), is that Tuesday was my day (it comes maybe a bit less than once every six months due to the size of the class) to present a twenty page extract of the book for critique or feedback to my fiction workshop, under—a reminder, if you’re new here—the tutelage of Mexican novelist and professional amateur (‘lover’) of literature, Martín Solares (<link is to his new book about writing, an expansion of its wonderful Spanish original but now available in English!!!!).

Every six months, my sense of being lost as I follow a tangled skein through the maze of my own imagination, unable to feel enough urgency or reality (compared to the horrendous reality of much of real life) to quickly locate either the monster at the centre or the hero trapped in its brain-like curves and crenellations, is briefly dispelled by the welcome urgency of an audience and a deadline provided by these rare workshop presentations.

In the end, the class was postponed and I will most likely have it this coming weekend. But no matter. Although feedback—reflection I can use to improve or redirect that work—is important, and encouragement feels even more so, what I needed most was that deadline, that anticipated audience. Even with the imminence of World War 3, those things helped this past week. As did rambling walks of the kind I take when depressed or stressed, where the longer you walk, noticing tiny beautiful and ordinary things, the more grounded you feel, and part way through, the impulse to imagination often returns of its own accord.