Four years it had taken to finish this novel, four years of endless drafts, workshops every week with three different groups, dozens of women critiquing my heroine’s tale of overcoming repression in the Depression and World War II, so much hard work, crafting the plot and creating the characters that tried to keep her down and, at the same time, forced her out of her cocoon – all done now, the manuscript frozen, the next step being to shop the book around, maybe self-publish if I lost patience with agents and publishers’ rejections – who cares about going that route, isn’t it only ego?
And now what? What would I do, now that I’d put Agnes, Norman, Brian, Cristina, Victoria, Siobhan, Uncle Collin, Siobhan, and Gracie to rest? Perhaps a sequel for the children, Grace and Harold? Perhaps a prequel, delving into Agnes’s father and Brian, and answering the burning question, did their friendship turn romantic? Nah, the reader likes to guess, the reader likes to fill in the blanks himself (or herself, let’s be honest – my readers will be predominantly women). But what now?
All I knew is that I couldn’t put the pen down now, now that I’d gotten it going. I had to create characters that wanted to grow but somehow stood in each others’ way. I had to make twisted plot points that somehow created seemingly insurmountable barriers for these people – who somehow became real to me. And I had to create historical settings for them, places with interesting pasts that were worth depicting. I had to write … but what now?
I opened a new Word document and stared at the blank page. I closed my eyes, and then I began typing.
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