Image: Not my hands, not my typewriter.
I've spent this summer working towards a new project. For me, that means jumping back and forth between several ideas trying to find one that resonates. I'll work on something for a few weeks until I no longer understand where it is headed and none of the characters are asserting themselves enough to take charge and show me the way. Or until it just peters out. Or when I realize I'm not really excited getting up in the morning to work on it.
Writer's Note: Generally, if the writer isn't excited by what he or she is working on, it follows that readers won't be excited to read it. Even if it is in a popular genre and technically solid, the writer's lack of enthusiasm cannot be hidden.
I have four very different projects I'm exploring, and the one that has my attention at the moment is a ghost story. Actually, that's not true. It is a story with ghosts, but not a ghost story. What is the difference, you might ask? The story is set in a land where the people are troubled by ghosts, but the story is not about the ghosts, which raises an interesting dilemma. I need to understand if I--the author--believe in ghosts. I know the characters, or most of them, believe, but I have not yet decided if I believe. It could all be some kind of mass psychosis that does not require the existence of ghosts, just a belief in them. So maybe the ghosts are not real.
That makes a big difference. How do I decide?
Folks who know me probably think this is an easy decision. They know I'm hyper-rational. Earlier this summer I wrote a post about my brother and I recording sounds from cemeteries at midnight. As freaked out as we got, and as much meaning as we invested in what those sounds could be, I always knew in my heart--okay, my mind--that it was not anything more than the wind blowing in the trees, or a car driving by, or a cow bellowing in a field nearby. So mass psychosis has got to be the way to go.
But there is a problem. I have had two 'ghostly' encounters in my life that demand an open mind.
The first was when our dog Copper was hit by a car and killed. Copper had been part of our family since I was five and I was sixteen when she died. I was really troubled by losing her. She used to sleep on my bed every night (actually, she made the rounds of all of our beds, but that doesn't take away from the special bond I felt with her.) The night after she died, I felt her curl up on my bed in her normal spot. When I looked down to see what was going on, Copper was there, but she glowed in an other-worldly way. I immediately knew that I could join her, and leave everything behind, or stay with my family and she would be gone. There was no judgement in that knowledge, no sense that one path was better than the other. It was just a truth that was available in that moment. And that knowing was enough to begin to heal my grief. I've never interacted with Copper again.
The second situation was a year later. We had moved a few miles away and had been in the new house for a couple of months, when I woke up in the middle of the night because someone sat down on the side of my bed. I could feel them tucking the sheets against my body with their hands. I opened my eyes, expecting to see my mom, but no one was there. I immediately closed my eyes, terrified, because I could still feel the weight of someone sitting on the bed and the sensation of their hands tucking me in. After a moment, I realized that there was no malice in what I was experiencing, just love. A feeling came over me of serenity and safety. I realized that I was experiencing my grandfather who had died several years earlier. Eventually I fell back asleep and when I woke in the morning, I remembered everything I had experienced. I never told a soul because who would believe something so crazy?
A couple of years later, home from college, I told my mom what had transpired. It was her father, after all, who had stopped in to check up on me. My mom let out a little shriek as I told the story. It turns out that my younger brother, who had the room next to mine, had told her the same story, with every detail being the same. Rudy and I had never spoken to each other about the experiences. Mass psychosis? Perhaps. Perhaps something else entirely.
Big News about Love: a novel of grief and desire coming soon! Check out this blog next week to learn more!
Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. If you go to readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway you can sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck!
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