When the Book Takes Over Everything
By Barbara O'Neal | August 28, 2019 |
Here is the truth: sometimes, you cannot have work/life balance. In the current world, that’s almost heresy, and as you know, I’m a deep believer in keeping the well full and taking care of yourself and loving the work. I like artists dates and measured hours for the writer and plenty of exercise. All that stuff.
But sometimes, the book is going to take all you’ve got. You will not be balanced and measured and sane. You’ll be unshowered and wild-haired and babbling about things that have no meaning to anyone in this world. Nor will you be able to have actual conversations with the living world because you have used up all your words on the book and there are none left over for live humans.
Sometimes this state comes about because of deadline, and that’s always the case for me. I am a working writer, and I’ve pretty much had a deadline for the next book for thirty years. Sometimes that deadline is a comfortable distance away, but most of the time, it’s coming up faster than I expected and then I have to go in my office, and shut everything else out.
But whether or not there is a deadline, there comes a point in every book when this has to happen. At some point, I have to open the window to the other world, the book world, and step into it.
And live there.
It takes a lot of effort to build the world of a novel. It’s a vast, complicated, layered thing, with about ten billion details you have to place. The landscape alone is complex, located in a particular place and time, with particular flora and fauna, and furniture and customs. Then we add the people of the book, the stars and the secondaries and the peas-and-carrots bit players. We conjure up weather and cars or horses or carts, and skies and sounds and meals and clothing appropriate for each one. Gestures. Habits. Longings and goals and frustrations and backstories.
That’s a lot.
It usually takes me the first six months to get the building right. I build and revise, the words coming slowly as I sit on the window sill and try to see what’s there.
Each day, when I come to the page, I have to open the window, let that world in, and get myself situated again. I do this over and over, day after day, until suddenly I can’t really leave it. There are too many things I’m trying to hold space for—the hares and the sea and all those dishes and growing things and birds. The only thing to do is to abandon this world and go live in that one.
Which also isn’t easy, as you well know if you’ve done this even once. Many of us here have done it multiple times, many times.
It isn’t easy for a few reasons. You do actually have to sustain your physical body, for one thing. You have to eat and sleep at the very least, and although I am not the kind of woman who forgets to eat, I will sometimes forget when I’m living in the other world. When I remember, it’s scrambled eggs or a grilled cheese sandwich and since it’s hot, watermelon or cherries. Food I can make easily and consume while working.
Sleep is also necessary. I try to sleep more than usual, but what often happens is that I nap between writing bouts. I’m not sure what this is about, honestly, but it has been a part of the process for me for a long time. I write for a block of time, usually 50-90 minutes, and then I’m sleepy and have to take a break to close my eyes for 20 minutes. This can go on all day long.
It used to make me feel very lazy. I mean, really, how much time was I wasting by taking all those breaks?
Now I know that it serves some important purpose. It saves me from entering this world very far, for one thing. I break from the book world, take that cat nap, then re-enter the book world. While I’m napping, the girls in the basement solve story problems and offer up tidbits and snippets I didn’t know I needed.
Most of us also have families around, and friends, maybe a spouse. My partner and friends and family all know this time will come in every book, and after knowing me for so long, they’re used to me disappearing for a few weeks. Friends will not see me, and my family sees my body but my brain is elsewhere.
Animals are good companions for all this, of course. They’re content for you to be physically present, even if you’re not there mentally/emotionally/spiritually, with one caveat—that daily walk. Which I do let go during this mad time if I don’t have a dog.
Society will try to pressure you to be something else, but I’m here in the wilderness right now, sending back the message that you don’t have to do anything. This is exhausting work. Exhausting. It always amazes me how utterly drained I am at the end of a day living in the book world, especially at this stage. It’s like spell-casting, holding a sacred circle, standing guard against intruders—all by yourself, and then also acting, directing, producing an entire movie at the same time.
Balance, while lovely at other times, is just not possible at this point in a book. For that few weeks or couple of months, you are allowed to be as weird as you like. Wear the same soft t-shirts and loose, soft pants (oh, they are so very soft) all day long. Eat the things that get you through. Sleep and write, write and dance, write and walk. Write, write, write, write, write. Live there.
It’s what we all wanted, isn’t it? It was what I wanted. To make things up and let them come to life using my body and hands and mind as a conduit. If I do it well enough, others will be able to go live in that world, too.
Which makes us all magicians, doesn’t it? We are casting spells, holding space, making magic. Magic takes what it takes. Nobody would ask a wizard to stop being weird and get dinner on the table.
When it’s finished, you can dive into a bed and sleep for days and then emerge and reclaim order, and eat the right things again, and get some fresh air. There is plenty of time.
In the meantime, just write. Write.
What stage of the book are you writing right now? What is the end of a book like for you? Do you strive for balance or is it difficult?
Barbara O’Neal is the author of more than a dozen award-winning, bestselling novels, including the runaway bestseller, When We Believed in Mermaids, which has been published in more than 20 countries and spent many months on the Amazon Charts, as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller lists. Barbara lives on the beach in rugged Oregon with her husband, a British endurance athlete who vows he’ll never lose his accent and their zoo of cats and dogs. You can find more information on her newsletter and where to find her on social media at barbaraoneal.com.
I have yet to finish a novel, so I don’t know about the clearing-the-decks at deadline ritual, but I yearn to have something that concrete to justify turning-off family, friend, and pet distractions for more than just a few hours, at a time. I loved your line, “Nobody would ask a wizard to stop being weird and get dinner on the table.” So true! Even that small responsibility can hang over me, as I start to fall away into my story and then realize–damn!–I need to thaw out some hamburger for dinner.
I tell my kids that my dream day is to not get out of my pajamas at all. They always look at me a little nervously, like I am planning to become a hobo. Then I remember that though they can drive, they are not old enough to buy wine. Darn! Must go on a field trip to the liquor store. And that means doing hair, and putting on make-up and street clothes, and nothing kills the writing vibe like making sure mascara is evenly applied.
I know I have more free time than most writers in this forum because I don’t work a day job, but taking care of kids, partner, pets, friends, and elderly moms seems to be enough to eat up my time in whole day chunks, and disrupt my ability to create “magic.” It is the sheer number of unanticipated interruptions that enervates.
So, when I am feeling disjointed and off-balance and wondering if I will ever finish my WIP, I come to the waters of WriterUnboxed and wade in for a time, and always, always, it restores my soul.
Thanks for a great article, and for always making me feel like I am not the only one who has these challenges.
I’m so glad you can get a sense of camaraderie here, Sherree. It does sound like maybe you need/want some boundaries and you get to create those. Also: full makeup for the grocery store/wine store? Uh, that’s why they make hats. ;)
Barb, good post. I read ONE THING by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan early in the year. Most of us juggle wearing many hats and this book really helped me to understand how excellence happens at the extremes, and how one can learn to counterbalance. So go ahead and “choose what matters the most and give it all the time it demands.”
Right now I’m in conference prep and short story mode. My kids have just left to go off to college and I’m declining all social engagements in Sept. Since my writing rhythm has long coincided with the school days, it’s natural for me to stick to it. I’m excited to start this new phase in our married life, just the two of us :)
I love both beginnings and endings, the first for all the possibilities and the second for seeing it all coming together and it’s hard to pull away from story world during those times. My kids knew that unless they were bleeding, they shouldn’t interrupt.
My kids grew up with a working writer, too, so they were pretty good. I do some times wonder how I had the energy to cook dinner when I was writing 2-3 books a year!
I loved this post so much it made me tear up. My son is about to turn 4 and I’m a newly single parent, so it’s just been impractical to enter my fiction worlds for more than 20 minute snippets about once a week.
I miss, so much, the descent into that dream space, the way everything else just goes away for a while. Your description was perfect.
Erin, even the grandest of wizards have to tend to life sometimes. You’ll get back to it. In the meantime, hugs on the challenges of the moment and the longing to be in the book world.
“You will not be balanced and measured and sane. You’ll be unshowered and wild-haired and babbling about things that have no meaning to anyone in this world. Nor will you be able to have actual conversations with the living world because you have used up all your words on the book and there are none left over for live humans.”
You could replace the word “book” in this quote from your post with the word “baby” and it works perfectly! I love this post so much because I am like this most of the time, and it helps me feel sane. Knowing that the appearance of insanity is common to you and others is simply wonderful. And it IS like having a new baby in the all-encompassing way we are consumed by a new creation.
I am in the phase of really getting to know my audience, spending a lot of time interacting with them on Facebook, by email and in Amazon book reviews. You are ‘way past that phase, but it’s critical and not to be avoided for the book I’m writing called, Solitary Splendor: Jewish On My Own, But Not Alone. It’s a deep project.
In the modern world, knowing and interacting with our audience is crucial. None of us are beyond that stage, and you’re smart to pay attention.
It is like giving birth, no question.
I.love.this.post.so.much!!! Alas, health issues have forced me – quite against my will – to spend more time in the real world than my darling story world. My characters are milling about, fretting and scolding me, reminding me that they have things to do, places to be!! The two main characters (twin sisters) are both engaged and quite anxious to get on with their weddings!!
As to where I am at in the process, my current book is the first in a series so I have spent eons creating the story world – maps, who’s who, character traits, and a timeline. The aforementioned weddings will wrap up Part I, and then I plunge into Part the Second, in which tragedy creates a huge rift between the sisters…
Sorry to hear about the health issues, Robin! Those things do fall into our lives, too, and of course the health has to come first.
I love the maps and character stage! So much play! Anything is possible!
Thanks, Barbara – learnng to live with a “new norm.” Writing is actually a kind of therapy, both physically (for my hands – RA) and emotionally!
Been there. Am not there now. The day job is sucking time, family is too.
But those are not bad things. I enjoy work and I love my family. It’s a mistake to feel that those things and writing are in competition. They are all part of me and work together.
What I’m doing is using this time to evaluate my WIP. The competition on the page (really, in my brain) is between the story events (what we see) and the lived experience (what we go through). Prose versus plot. Inner life versus outer events.
It turns out that the difficulty I face in writing from inside a character’s lived experience is the same difficulty I face in feeling fully and effortlessly happy with work and family: I don’t feel I deserve it.
I have no problem with selfish immersion at deadline time. I do wish that it came with unqualified ownership and joy.
I know you know you DO deserve it. Just reinforcing that. You do deserve it when it arrives.
Barbara, you made magic with this post—lovely, rich writing and an immersive map of that weird world of book birth. Thank you.
It is a weird stretch of time, for sure.
You know, I always love your posts. :)
I’m drawing landscape right now and I have found myself becoming overwhelmed with choices and decisions and starting to have that familiar, freezing anxiety that I’m going to make the wrong choice. After reading your post I think I might not be opening the window and entering my story world. It’s on the other side of the window pane and I’m wiping the glass trying to see in, instead of just throwing the window open and jumping through (which I know is what I need to do.) Tonight, after everything has quieted around the house, I’ll do just that. Be brave, take a deep breath, and jump. Thanks for the reminder.
Balance, to my mind, is an average, not a fixed point. “To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” Sometimes it’s time to be so deep in the book world that your ping time is discernible on a sundial.
I’m fortunate to have a husband who will make sure that I regularly eat and sleep and wash when my mind is far away in a world without clocks. If I hadn’t married him I’d probably be more or less feral by now, subsisting off carrots and raspberry buns at 2am and forgetting how to talk outside my head.
I love this post. Thank you for sharing it with us. I can relate to it. It’s as if you were describing me – the catnaps and all. Retired, I have the luxury of time, and my husband is very understanding, so I feel very fortunate. There is magic in the escape writing gives me. I love going to that other world, the one on paper. Complex and demanding as the task is, there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing with my life right now.
Great post, Barbara. This is exactly how I’ve spent so much of my life the last twenty five years – and I’m grateful to have had the chance to live in these other worlds. Your posts are always spot on about a writer’s life and I love reading them.
Hey Barbara–Just a quick note to let you know that I originally read this while I was traveling, and though the circumstance wasn’t conducive to commenting, you really left me thinking.
I wanted to let you know what a powerful inspiration you continue to provide. And to thank you for it.
Oh my gosh Barbara – you captured the writer’s life so well. This is it, exactly. And thank you for saying publicly that work-life balance isn’t always possible for the working writer, and it’s okay. We just need our friends and family to understand and not take it personally when we retreat from social activities during the deadline crisis. We will come out of the cave eventually and be human again.
Actually, this is the *reason* I decided I don’t want to be a writer. I don’t like the way I feel in this state; it’s mentally and physically exhausting in ways that seem to take me several months to recover from. I decided it wasn’t something I could handle doing multiple times.
Thanks so much for these words. My family did an “intervention” on my time spent writing late last year. When I retired from the day job where I wrote legal and technical documents, learning to write fiction forced me back to learning from scratch. So built my confidence publishing nonfiction short stories. Next logical progression for me were novels. How hard could this be, anyway? OMG! My family finally understands now that writing is my lifestyle now. They were alarmed that I didn’t have balance. Since then I have worked to be all things to all people to keep peace in the valley. Means less time spent writing, so my novel progression feels snail-paced. I’ve pitched and have several requests for ms on 2 novels. Now: getting time required for revision and polishing is a struggle. Am getting closer with one novel because I limited my word count so I could manage it. But yes, the book does take over everything to the point where the husband pushed me into an Eastern European tour to take a complete break. Best thing I’ve done! Ready to dive back in to live in my book. Submitting it soon…it has finaled in the top 3 out of 84 entries in a contest, so motivated more than ever to finish!! Thank you, you have validated what I’ve been going through!
Fantastic post, thank you! Sometimes we do need to give ourselves permission to just do what we need and take in what’s necessary to get the words down and the world right. But indeed, it’s so removed from what is expected of us in the normal world (especially, I believe, for women) that it’s so easy to let guilt steal some of our magic too. From someone also in that other world right now, living a dual life (or pretending to for now.) ;)
Thank you so much for letting me know that I am not alone in this! I find myself wondering if I’m annoying everyone around me because all I can talk about is the book I’m writing. I also paint, and there are times when I am trapped in the studio by my own vision coming to life, and all sense of time ceases to exist for me. I am fortunate in that I am surrounded by kind and understanding people who encourage me to go the distance, but as I don’t know many other writers, I wondered if I was simply going mad. The work gets done, but it requires falling deep into the world I build for the novel. Apparently you can’t change your postal address to the fictional world you create. Seems a shame sometimes. In any case, I found your article illuminating and comforting.
I love that—you can’t change for postal address for the book world.
Wonderful post! Years ago, before retirement, I was part of huge event (State of Texas celebration of the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico) I don’t even know how many staff from across the state were part of the planning and execution. But as one responsible for the published material we put out, I stayed at my desk till very late and woke up often in time to be back to the office by 3 a.m. It was a wonderful success and taught me a lot about the ONE THING process. Now your post has given me the welcome news that since my writing has turned to fiction, and my straight hair has adopted waves caused by bands and clips to the point my beautician thinks its naturally curly, that my new life is just normal for authors. Thanks so much ;-)