Tanya Chernov

Through the recent blur of life-changing days and endless logistical matters, I’ve been reading John Irving’s The Cider House Rules. I’d read a few other books by John Irving, and had seen the film adaptation with Charlize Theron and Tobey Maguire a few years back. The movie was good, but the novel is magnificent. I love the way Irving makes such giant, meandering, sub-plot digressions without ever making any of it seem tedious. His characters are so quirky, and richly developed that I didn’t mind being taken away from the main action every so often. By the end of the book, I found myself rationing pages so that I could stretch the story out as long as possible, not wanting it to end. Best. Feeling. Ever.

Like most writers, I spend the majority of my reading time doing research for one writing project or another these days, and very rarely get to read a regular old novel just for fun. I read dozens of memoirs and self-help books for almost eight years while I wrote A Real Emotional Girl, crying my way through one grief book after another. I would have been remiss had I not considered that the research material for a prose novel would be a bit easier to digest on a daily basis, and that this part of the process is a huge part of the story-telling endeavor. Doing some supplemental research reading for the novel I’ve started working on actually sounds fun this time around.

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Last night, Kelly and I hosted a release party for the Fall 2009 issue for the Los Angeles Review. Held at the C & P Coffee Shop in West Seattle, we were thrilled to see many of our Pacific Northwest-area contributors and supporters show their support of this literary magazine for which we care so much. After some schmoozing, catching up, and book sales, we were treated to readings by LAR 6 contributors Anne Liu Kellor, Michael Schmeltzer, Rachel Mehl, Hannah Notess, and Martha Silano. There were many “hmm’s” and “ahh’s” and definitely a few laughs.

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We must be willing to get rid of
the life we’ve planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
The old skin has to be shed
before the new one can come

                                -Joseph Campbell

First—a hearty thank you to all my friends and family who have shown their love and support not only through phone calls, emails, and lots of long-distance love, but also through their devoted reading of my blog. I am so very grateful to you all for keeping me going while I put the pieces of my new life together. At a time when I don’t feel a whole lot of creative energy bursting forth, I do at least have some real urge to reach out through this blog. It is so helpful to know that there are people out there, reaching back from the other end.

As best I can, I am trying to hold my head up and move forward, knowing that even though this was most definitely not the direction I thought my life would be heading at this point, it is precisely the right direction. Among all the logistical matters that must be regarded when two people part ways after so many years together, I am scrambling to figure out what my identity will be as I go off on my own once again. I am anxious to get settled into a new place quickly, so that I can once more set up my writing space, surround myself with books, and pick up my writing projects where I left them off.

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Some days the sky breaks open in so many places that there is no sun or warmth, and the world shakes beneath all the houses and streets. Some days the clouds do not part, and the grass refuses to grow. Some days the universe seeks to break hearts, as if to say “Only some of this matters.”

“Some days” are happening for me right now. And though I know I’ll come through the other side of things eventually, today I am not ok; today I am feeling like I am not one of those things that matters to the universe.

Days like these, I walk from room to room not knowing what to do with myself. Days like these I force the dogs to cuddle with me even when they’d rather play. I kiss their faces as if they knew what kisses were and let the heat coming off their heads warm my lap. Days like this I eat everything in sight or else nothing at all, trying to find out which one feels more soothing, only to realize that there is no such things as being soothed at the moment.

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I’ve written about this a few times before, and the issue has once again resurfaced. Being a writer means that I almost never get a full night’s sleep because my creative juices always seem to start pumping while I’m barely conscious, so that I must rouse myself into consciousness and write things down or risk losing them forever. Like many writers, I then spend the rest of the night trying to quiet my mind enough to fall back asleep, the new subplot characters and inciting incidents drifting in and out of my hazy view. Kelly talked yesterday on her blog about one of the things we writers sacrifice, and it got me thinking about all that an artist must give up for the craft.

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Most of you know about my longstanding love for all things Hemingway, which began almost immediately after birth due to my father’s unfailing love for the writer. Dad used to read me the Nick Adams stories when I was a kid, and as I got older we shared some of Hemingway’s more complex writings. By the time I arrived at college, I’d already read all but a few Hemingway publications, and had been trying to emulate his painfully plain style of writing.

My senior year of college, I signed up for a year-long Hemingway seminar, a course that would not only analyze the man’s work but the man himself. One thing that stayed with me quite strongly when I graduated, and has continued to root itself in my mind, is how prolific Hemingway managed to be even though his life was very often in shambles. I loved that he was best known for his fiction, but that he continued to write magazine articles, short forms, nonfiction and even poetry. I thought to myself, I want to be like him–the kind of writer who does every genre.

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I made a rookie mistake today, something that no one who has lived in Seattle for 10 years should still do. Upon waking up to sunshine and clear skies, I thought to myself, Wonderful—it’ll be nice out today. I should have known better than to anger the Rain Gods with my presumptuousness.

 I left my rain jacket in the front hall closet and loaded the dogs into the car for a trip to the off-leash dog park at Marymoor Park. Marymoor is across the floating bridges from West Seattle and about a thirty-minute drive from my house, so I bring the dogs there for a treat only every now and then to let them swim in the Sammamish River. The whole way there, the sun beat down on me through the windshield (I even wore my sunglasses!) and though the temperature gauge on my dashboard still only showed a crisp 41 degrees, it was indeed wonderful weather.

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 First of all, I spoke too soon—there is most definitely a ghost in this house. More on that later.

Though I have been thinking obsessively about my possible new book idea the last few days, I knew that I needed a little more input on the plotline before going any further. After coffee and much overly-excited high-speak on my half, Kelly has officially given me her stamp of approval on the new book idea, thus providing the criteria for me to really start working on it. So, here I go…….

To start, I plan on completing a through and detailed outline of the plot and sub-plot, so that I at least have some scaffolding on which I can rely when I sit down to start typing the opening lines.

Plus, if I didn’t assign myself arduous writing tasks such as this, I would never get anything done. My mom would say here that I put too much pressure on myself but I know that this is how it must be.  After college, I kept waiting for someone to give me a writing assignment or prompt so that I would have a reason to write and when no one did, I stopped writing for years. It took me a Master’s degree and a long time for me to learn how to give myself those assignments.

But before I can even attempt to begin the most basic stages of this outline, I need one thing first: a name for my protagonist.

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In the midst of all this moving business and unending amount of boxes to unpack, my creative brain decided to kick things into high gear. Apparently I didn’t have enough on my plate for my mind to be satisfied. At 11:30 last night, just crawling into bed completely exhausted with a good book to start reading, I began to have the newborn tingling of an idea for my next writing project. The last thing I wanted to do was get up to grab a pen. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about such late-night brainstorming sessions, it’s that I definitely won’t remember everything the next morning and no matter how painful it is, I simply must get up and write everything down.

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