My Year of Not Writing

Why?

I began writing seriously in 2003, got my first book contract in 2006, and have published five novels in the almost-8 years since then. By the standards of most writers, I've found success. The Kingdom of Childhood, my first novel with MIRA, had a splashy debut at BookExpo America and received critical acclaim, sold well at outlets like Target and Costco, has been read in a university lit course and translated into five languages. The two books that followed-- Heaven Should Fall and Inside These Walls-- met with more modest success, though many have called the latter book my best one yet.

I love to write. I love being an author. I fear losing relevance, falling off the radar, losing my seat at the table. Like most contemporary authors, I feel the intense pressure to write quickly and write for the market. To turn out a book a year, or, lacking that, as fast as my typing fingers will carry me.

But after I turned in Inside These Walls-- a book written in a steady, laser-focused frenzy of inspiration, a story that I needed to work out of my heart the way a child works at a loose tooth-- I found that none of my three new, brilliant ideas were sticking. I could still write a good page of prose, but my overall drive could be summed up in a word: meh.

The fact is, writing fiction-- at least for me-- is a synthesis of all the images and feelings and fears and fascinating ideas that have floated through my mind these past thirty-seven years. It's the whirlpool where all those rivers meet, and for me, quite a few of them had run dry. My five published novels represent about half of what I have actually written-- some ideas successful, others not, but all drawing from that same creative pool. I knew I needed to fill my mind with new material, or risk writing the same book twice.

So at the dawn of 2014, I made a New Year's Resolution: This year, for the first time in ten years, I will not write a book.

It's comical-- so many people resolve that this year will be the year they write their novel!-- but to me it's a resolution fraught with anxiety. Writing is my job. In today's publishing environment, an author is a product, a brand, that either sells or fails to sell; one's worth must always be proven, and then proven again. If I'm not working on a manuscript, what the hell am I doing? How am I going to get a contract? Keep my name out there? Make a living?

Whoa there. Back it up. A novel should be written because you cannot NOT write it. If fear has a part in it, it should be the fear of not knowing yourself, or of dying without telling the world what you know-- not the fear of losing adulation.

This blog is intended to be a record of my year of opting out of the artists' rat race. It's a day-by-day reflection of the time I took to replenish my creative toolbox and-- I hope-- emerge with thoughts of a book I have to write. Will it work?

I don't know. I'm nowhere near that far into the story yet.