200 blog posts now locked into archives, I’ve written a billion times how my characters’ world is so real to me that sometimes, it scares me. I’ve written about how crazy it’s driven me, and how at times, it’s even blurred my reality. And while I never heaved a sigh of relief to get out of it when I finished the novel, I felt an exciting prospect looming on the horizon of entering another world with the new piece. But to be quite honest, after the first few thousand words, his world just wasn’t as interesting to me. Of course, how could it be; I know Christian’s world like I know my own (hell, it overlaps so much I want to confuse them). And with every scribble in my Moleskine, every literary thought that’s been passing through my head, I’m finding myself lulled by the siren song of those characters who simply refuse to be put to bed.
After a few productive F train rides (startling contradiction, I realize) scribbling, I transcribed 675 words of handwritten scratch into a piece that follows Christian back to New York. After fighting with the new, unrelated story so much, I was startled not only by the ease with which Christian’s mini-story came, but how many questions I was bursting to explore. Who is he now? Who has everyone else become? Most importantly, which storylines are still hiding something so rich and untapped?
And that’s when I started thinking. Maybe I was too quick to decide that I needed to get out of that world. Once the manuscript is done, who says that world is over? Ellis certainly doesn’t, and really, neither did I when I started writing my new character in the other work (who shares and office with Holly from YDE). Whose rule was I following to hop away from these heartbeats so quickly? So that’s when I had a couple of conversations, and I’ve decided to take a step back. Now that the future of YDE is out of my hands (for now, and fingers are still heartily crossed), new fiction needs to stay a priority. I think I need to push what came from my mindless subway scribble as far as it can possibly go. Keep learning about what happened before, what happened after, and hopefully sneak into heads and voices I haven’t yet explored. Put aside what I told myself I was supposed to write next.
Since when does the best fiction come from following rules, anyway?
M
