Nothing Might Happen

 

Last summer, when the final edits on my new novel were done, but it would still be a year before books or even galleys were ready, I gave my mother the completed manuscript. She has long been my most important reader. She was my first reader. Once upon a time she was my amanuensis; before I could write I would dictate stories and she would take them down in a little book, in her lovely, clear, open hand. Young children love their mother's eyes, and teeth, and noses, in part because of their great familiarity: these are the landscapes we grew up gazing at, the proportions by which we learned to perceive and gauge the rest of the world, from our earliest hours in arms. My mother's handwriting is almost as dear to me, almost as elemental a template as her face: her lines and loops on the page look like home.

She had stated her desire to wait to read this latest novel when it was finished, rather than in bits and pieces as I wrote. But she didn't want to take a chance on waiting until publication. Just in case.

So last summer I gave her the manuscript of "The Grief of Others," and then we didn't talk about it for a while, except every so often she'd say, "I want you to know I realize I haven't said anything about the book. I haven't forgotten, I'm just waiting for a period when my mind is clearer." Other times she'd say, "I started reading, but I put it down because I realized I wasn't taking it in." She was trying to match the reading to her chemo schedule, trying to time it to her most lucid and energetic days. It made me think of jump rope, like when you're jumping in. The rope is already swinging, and you have to catch the timing just right so as not to get smacked by it coming down.

After several weeks, or maybe months, there came a day when she told me she was about three-quarters of the way through, and that she was loving it, and that she couldn't wait to see what was going to happen. And then quickly she corrected herself: "I mean - knowing you - I realize nothing might happen!" At which I burst out laughing. She meant her amendment kindly, intending to honor the kinds of stories I write or have written in the past - which is to say, ones with sorely little plot or action - but as soon as it came out, she realized it might sound like a knock, a condemnation, and so she tried to acknowledge all that and at the same time I was trying to reassure her I knew exactly what she meant and found it quite funny and apt. And this was on the telephone and we kept dipping in and out with our voices and our assurances and our explanations, and of course we kept stepping on each other's words and laughing, and yet the work was getting done - we were explaining, we were understanding, and this too, was like the motion of turning the ends of a jump rope in rhythm and jumping in and skipping along, all without getting our feet too tangled.

Reader, in three months I have a new book coming out. You can see an image of the cover in the upper right hand corner of this page. For the next stretch of time, I'm going to commit myself to writing posts about the process and experiences leading up to, and perhaps just past, publication. It's the kind of blogging I have been most loathe to engage in - that is, the solipsistic author's blog, in which the posts are all about the author's "career." And yet I understand how a backstage glimpse at this process might be of interest to some readers (certainly when I was starting out, I would have been ravenous for a peek at what goes on). So I will try to balance my distaste for self-referential pandering with an experiment in subverting the form. My aim is to be honest, both with myself and with you. To that end I am - gulp - reopening comments on this blog, after having removed that feature some time ago in the wake of what seemed to me a baffling tone of bickering that had broken out among various of the commenters. If you have specific questions about the pregnant period of pre-publication (a friend of mine refers to this time as being with "with book," as in "with child"), feel free to ask them here and maybe I'll make them the basis of a future post.

Meanwhile, a question for you: what are your thoughts about blogging -- blogging-for-attention, blogging-for-sales, blogging-for-truth, blogging-for-love?