Mystery moving forward

Sometimes life puts on the brakes and gaining momentum feels impossible

Bless us reader for we have sinned. It’s been 61 days since our last newsletter.

(Pause for absolution or penance)

Some momentous things have happened in those last 61 days. For one, I got a new job doing pretty much exactly what I was always meant to do. I am editing an honest to goodness print magazine. Nothing flashy. It’s an industry mag for independent Garden Centers. That said, it’s pretty and perfect and maybe my favorite job to date. I even have an office … with a door that shuts and everything.

Summer also happened in that 61 days. There were kids to be entertained and shuttled around. There were camping trips and house maintenance. There were gatherings and fireworks.

There was not, however, any progress on the novel. Well, maybe a couple of sentences.

And Kitty and I both have feelings about that pause. My feeling is one of guilt. But not because I was being lazy and inactive. I wasn’t. I felt guilt because I left our hero, Mickey, in a desperate situation.

Look. I know how books work. I know Mickey isn’t real and the world doesn’t actually exist outside of the page, but still … In the novel, young Mickey had been chased through an abandoned factory. She was bruised and bloody and a villain had caught her, threatening violence. And that’s where she stayed.

I knew she would be safe. I have the reigns (most of the time). But she didn’t know what was coming. And there was something odd about leaving her in that suspended animation perpetually in danger.

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve been pushing the story forward. It’s been moving at the pace of about a sentence week. Until yesterday, when something broke and I was finally able to pick up steam. Finally, Mickey was saved.

There have been many stories told about creations becoming independent of their creators. And until the novel, they’d never really moved me. Now, I get it. Because writing a character like Mickey is a lot of responsibility. Sometimes, I wish Mickey had the agency to move herself — get herself out of danger and find her way home, figure out the mystery without guidance or simply decide none of it’s worth the time.

My guilt of leaving her where she was all summer is probably more about me wishing I had the agency to be a more active novelist. It probably has more to do with me feeling like I’m not living up to my potential as a mystery writer.

Kitty likes to remind me that any sentence put to the page is progress. I hear her, and I’m trying to internalize that message. She’s right, of course. Even if it’s happening at a sentence a week, a novel is being written. She’s happy with that.

Kitty is the beating heart that keeps the book alive. I love her. And maybe above anything else, that’s the key to writing a mystery novel with your spouse.