Sleeping Solo: One Woman's Journey into Life after Marriage (6 page)

My brave, psychic, totally awesome voice teacher told me to
try it again, just vowels this time.
 
Just sound, and let whatever was in there that needed to come out just
come.
 
I was still solidly frozen
back then, and I didn’t manage to do what she asked in that lesson, or in the
several that came after.

But just by offering that up, she had changed the rules of
what my lessons were about, and one day a couple of months later, we were
experimenting with the notes at the very top of my range.
 
We picked a YouTube video of an
operatic, high, soaring song just to see what would happen—one that I
happened to know from my well-behaved choir days.

I kept to a vowel and started singing along.
 
Just sound.
 
Listening to the singer on the video
clip instead of me, letting her notes land inside my skin and move wherever
they wanted to go.

Just sound.

At some point, I realized it wasn’t just her singing
anymore.
 
It was
me
.
 
A high, soaring, glorious river of music
in a range I hadn’t even been able to spit at, pouring out of my mouth, pouring
out of my soul as tears
waterfalled
down my face.

Sound, sung like I really meant it.

For weeks, every time I pulled up that video and started to
sing, the tears would come.
 
And
from then on, every time I walked into my lesson, we headed somewhere new,
following the clues in my voice.
 
We
traveled clunky songs and grief-filled ones, defiant anthems and wordless
lullabies.
 
And always, still, I
spend at least a little time with the bell-clear notes in the sky, because I
adore them and they connect me with something I can’t touch as reliably any
other way.
 

Soaring joy for the pure hell of it.

Sound doesn’t only put me in my body—it gives my body
her voice.

The voice I couldn’t
hold on to.
 
I’m a
writer, and that’s more than just a calling.
 
It was the way I was paying our bills,
and it had been successful beyond all imagining.
 
I wrote a million words in the three
years leading up to the day of destruction.
 
I had a dedicated, growing audience, a
cast of characters I loved, and at least another million words to write to do
their stories justice.

I planned to keep writing in my current world for years
yet.
 
I loved what I was doing, I
adored my readers, and I had all the motivation in the world—these books
were going to pay for the care our son would need long after we were gone.
 
When you’re the parent of a
special-needs child, there are so many fears about the future.
 
Money can’t fix all of them, but it’s a
big and mighty sword to swing at the boogeymen in the dark.

So I rode the edge of exhaustion, pouring words out of my
heart.
 
Because I
could, because I loved it, and because so much was riding on getting it done.

The thing is, you can’t always choose what the bomb shards
hit.

I knew right away that my writing had been wounded, I simply
didn’t know how badly.
 
I wrote
stories of happy, intact families—a place where people belong, no matter
what, where every soul is deeply seen and loved, and where glitter and ice
cream fix all things.
 
My books are
full of scenes dripping with tears and laughter and sometimes both, all of it
deeply seated in the heart of family.

Yeah.
 
Not hard
to see how that might run into a bit of a snag.

So while I did the necessary work to get my December release
through the last rounds of proofreading and formatting and holiday launch, I
contemplated my next book with something akin to dread.

I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping,
I
couldn’t even stay warm.
 
How the
hell was I supposed to write a book full of goopy, family-affirming love?

I started the next book at the beginning of February,
steeped in the weird mix of wild waterfalls and the cauldron of hate spewing
from my basement.

I gave it a freaking awesome effort.
 
I warned my readers they would only be
getting two releases this year instead of the usual four.
 
I signed up my amazing writing coach
(that’s code for insightful butt-kicker), battened down the hatches, and got
the next book underway.
 
I steered
it into a storyline I thought I could write—one focused on an eleven-year-old
girl in peril, and the love that would come together to call her through it.

The first half of the book went fine.
 
I slowed down, got better sleep, wrote
what felt good in a day, and tried to soak in the ways that writing served my
soul.
 
And on the days when I simply
couldn’t put two decent words together, I learned to be gentle with myself and
go commune with the beach instead.

I even got partway through the typically calamitous
middle.
 
Middles are always hard,
because I write by the seat of my pants, and that usually results in some big
holes by the time I’m muddling through the middle.
 
But I’ve been through this process for
thirteen books, and it always comes together.
 
Sometimes I write the ending and then go
back to the connecting bits.
 
Sometimes I just apply liberal amounts of duct tape and bubble gum and
the book miraculously holds water.

But things felt different this time.
 
I kept doggedly writing
scenes,
trying not to despair at how many words I was
throwing out because they were terrible, even as I wrote them.
 
Pretty sentences, void
of meaning.

Void of feeling.

It’s hard to write an ending drenched in love and family
when your own is riding stormy seas.
 
And in this case, it was very hard to use the eternal heart of family to
call an eleven-year-old girl home.

My girl’s going to have to be made of sterner stuff.

I could write the words—but I couldn’t mean them.
 
I couldn’t imbue them with the
conviction they needed, and I knew the story was flat as a pancake because of
it.
 
The piece of me that had always
ended up in my words—the heartbeat of my fictional family—was
bleeding.

Telling my readers they weren’t going to get this book was
one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
 
It felt like I was giving up on them, on my son’s future, on my
promises, on financial security.

But it also felt absolutely necessary.

Writing is an act of creative love.

I’d tried tapping into my past, to slide myself emotionally
back to a time when I channeled these books more easily.
 
I can’t begin to tell you how much that
hurt or how much those words sucked.

Sometimes, you just can’t go back.

I finished the book.
 
And I knew it wasn’t
gonna
fly, even as I sent it off to my story editor.
 
After thirteen books, I have pretty good
instincts—and this one just didn’t get there.

I stared at it for another week, hoping for one of those
really cool moments when the dots start moving, make a new shape, and stuff
untangles into a thing of beauty.
 
But it didn’t come, and I knew why.
 
I’m not an outline writer, not a plot-and-structure
kinda
girl.
 
I have picked up a few pieces of
writerly
craft along the way, but the truth is, I write by instinct.
 
I feel my way through a book, through
the pacing and plot and character emotional arcs and everything else.

I
feel
.
 

It’s like flying an airplane.
 
Some people get around by the instrument
panel, and they don’t care much whether they can see out or not.
 
I’m one of those crazy fighter pilots
from an earlier time who needs to fly a couple of loops in a clear blue sky to
figure out which way France might be.

I wasn’t going to turn these limping words into a book
unless and until I could feel France again.
 

And not for all the money in the world was I going to
release crap.

So I put a tearful, heartfelt, deeply honest post up on my
Facebook page, one that came not from the author, but from me, frail human
being.

I wish that every person on earth could be gifted a day like
what happened next.

Comments, many hundreds of them, wrapped
in the energy of thoughts from thousands more.
 
A tsunami of love and support and advice
and encouragement, from people who had been through a divorce and those who
hadn’t, from those new to my books and the regulars who had been with me since
the beginning.
 
So
much balm for my bruises and sorrow and guilt and grief.
 

They didn’t see the author—they saw me.
 
These people who had read my million
words and fallen in love blew right past the news that their beloved series was
on indefinite hold and wrapped me in utter acceptance.

I still go back to that wall of words often.
 
Not very many people have proof like
that of how much they matter.

I’d already decided that I needed to do what was right for
me—but they gave me permission to do it with a light heart.
 
My beautiful world of love and family
will live on in so many hearts—even if I can never write another word
there.

I shifted gears, started writing three or four things,
waiting for one to take hold.
 
And
one did.
 
A story with more
attitude
and less glitter, carefully rooted outside the most
hurt places of my soul.
 
(It’s
called
Lesbian Assassins
.
 
It began as a dare, honest.)
 
A chance to play and
write something a little less emotionally draining.

It’s been fun, even if the whole plan to keep these
characters a bit more at arm’s length hasn’t worked out
all
that
well.
 
And there are
stories percolating in the wings.
 
I
sit down these days eager to write, my fingers struggling to keep up with the
flow.

I sit down knowing that I am still a writer.

I don’t know that anything I will write ever again will touch
quite the same chord in the universe as my first series.
 
I got the amazing chance to be the
spinner of a dream that lives deep in the heart of so very many people, and I
know full well exactly how special that was.

I still don’t know if I will ever be able to go back to
those stories.
 

But I figure if that time comes, my ribs will know.

Being happy when it’s
still messy.
 
My life
these days is
basically happy.
 
I didn’t expect that—a lot of the
divorce self-help stuff talks about how the party who got surprised by all of
this will be forever running to catch up.

Not me.
 
Somewhere in the last few months, I got clear of the wreckage.
 
Not entirely—I don’t know if
that’s possible when you have kids and the legal stuff isn’t settled yet.
 
So maybe it’s more accurate to say that
my heart got clear.
 
My life got
clear.
 
Shit will still happen, but
it doesn’t get to sit in the driver’s seat anymore.

That doesn’t mean crap doesn’t hit the wall, or that I’m a
cheerful fairy free of anger and the occasional need to throw things at the
wall and the more frequent need to vent to a friend or two.
 
Sometimes one of my
Lesbian Assassins
characters gets way too moody and I have to go
have a chat with her and explain that she is not
me
and she doesn’t need to track my emotional state all over the place.
 
(There have been a couple of cathartic
scenes written that won’t ever see the light of day, however…)

Sadness still visits regularly too.
 
For my writing, for my marriage, for my
kids who are in many ways only now starting to register what they’ve lost.
 

My head is not stuck in a sandy beach somewhere—these
things are very real and in some ways, because they contrast with the
happiness, I feel them more deeply.
 
I try simply to let these things that are not happy arrive, to notice
and be gentle with how I feel.
 
I
will never make a good Buddhist, but honoring what rises up in my body matters.

And then I invite happiness back.
 
If I’m feeling stuck, I go find a
bossypants
wind to help me find fluidity again.
 
If I’m drifting in ugly conversational
circles in my head, I go walk under the moon to my cove and let the waves lap
my toes and carry the
nasties
out into the great
primeval waters.
 

I let the light sneak back in.

Because the thing is this—I can mourn
and be happy
.
 
I can be sad for the things that I have
lost, and that my children have lost.
 
I can have moments where the missing of these hits the back of my knees
or the front of my heart so hard that I just want to wail into the merciless
universe.