Hang Ups

About three years ago, I started a book. I wasn't sure what it was going to be about, except that there was a little white dog involved, and a single woman looking for something out of the ordinary. She didn't have a name at first, but as I began writing a story formed.

For people who haven't written a book or poem or story before, this next part is going to sound crazy. I didn't know what book I was going to write, but I have several instances where I was writing and there would be a knock on my character's door, and I wouldn't know what was on the other side until my character opened the door.

I'm not insane.

There was another part of the book where my main character is at work, and suddenly this man appears and I have to keep writing until another character introduces him. I didn't know what his name was until the character spoke it into existance.

I repeat: I'm not insane.

This book started to write itself just a few chapters in. There were times when I would try to reel it back in, to demonstrate my control of the story and that's when things would start to fall apart. I literally felt at times that I, the author of this book, was a mere vehicle to put some character's stories on the page. They would speak to me in frantic whispers in the middle of the night and continue pestering me until I wrote it down the next day.

If you write, you understand that these characters take on a life of their own. But at the end you know them. You've named them sometimes and you've grown to appreciate their triumphs and epic fails. When you finish the book you release it onto the world much like a birth mother might release her biological child to adoptive parents. You know you have no more control of its destiny. You hope that the reader (parent) cares for your book (child) the way you have cared for it. You wonder if the reader will sit back and sign when it reads about the first kiss. You anticipate the reader's discovery of the dream in chapter fourteen or hope s/he gets the nuance of your words in that final scene. If a person is lucky enough to get that very first draft, you wonder if s/he knows what a precious, precious gift they have. And, if you no longer speak to the person who holds that child of yours, you secretly wish for it back. You can never trust someone with a your child if you can not trust that person with your own heart or soul.

My book is a big deal. It's my very first. It's not my last, as Janelle reminded me this evening. "You're going to write many, many books," she reminded me, and I know she is absolutely right. "If you cry whenever you write a book, you're gonna flood a river." She's right about that, too.

I'm just sad that this part is over. It was the first time I dared to let anyone read my entire book. Now that I have it back, I'm afraid of touching it. There's so much to fix, so much to correct, and then there will come the day when I have to release it again. Forever this time.

There will come a day when I hang up on this chapter of my life and start another book. I don't know if I have the strength to write another.

And I don't know if I have the strength not to.