Yesterday, sitting in my bed after chemo, I finished the final draft (as far as anything is final) of my novel, Failure to Thrive. I am now working on finalizing an agent list for querying and writing the query and synopsis.
And yes, given I’m in week 14 of chemo, cycle 5, it feels somewhat heroic to have written and revised and revised again a 104,500-word novel. And I love this novel. I can’t wait to share it with people.
And I keep thinking of Anne Sexton.
It was not until college, when a senior introduced me, a young freshman, to Poetry magazine right there on the library shelves, that I learned there were actually living poets, in America. Such was my high school education (the honor’s track!) and its focus on white, dead, mostly British men.
Any study of American women poets, however, was bleak. Anne Bradstreet was as boring as dirt. Emily Dickinson was nuts. A recluse in a Victorian collar, sewing her poems into “versicle” booklets and storing them in a cedar chest. How much better to be Walt Whitman, that hack, boisterous and virile and singing America!
The first female American poet whose work I loved was Anne Sexton. I loved her use of figurative language and still think she’s the best simile-constructor ever. Her work was both personal and accomplished. I had a volume from the library that included a chronological chart of her life/career in the back. It stopped me cold. The entries showed her struggles, what she was “writing through,” quite clearly. One day she’s accepting a major award, a few weeks later a suicide attempt. Births of children. Books published. Prizes. Hospitalizations.
I escaped the addictions and the mental illness. But I got cancer. And now, I’m writing through. On good days I work, on “down days” I try not to think of all I can’t do. Every day I try not to think about what is to come, how much longer I have to do this. What it might mean to publish, to go out in the world with this disease and speak, read, travel for the book. What success might look like now.
I’ve taken down the selected letters of Flannery O’Connor and put it by my bed. Another writer who wrote through, leaving New York City for the Georgia peacock farm and trying to live quietly enough, long enough, with the lupus that killed her at 39 in August 1964, six weeks after my birth. She managed to write more than two dozen of the greatest short stories written in English, and two astonishing novels. And as the Wikipedia entry says: “Her daily routine was to attend Mass, write in the morning, then spend the rest of the day recuperating and reading. Despite the debilitating effects of the steroid drugs used to treat O’Connor’s lupus, she nonetheless made over sixty appearances at lectures to read her works.” It also tells us “she lived seven years longer than expected.”
Today is a somewhat down day. The little mousetrap on my belly just beeped, so for the next hour I’m receiving Neulasta for my white blood count support. I’m tired and a little foggy. But I’m making my list of agents, working on my query and synopsis, getting the manuscript formatted and printing it out for the binder I have waiting. Writing through.
You are so amazing! I salute your shining spirit, Susan.
Beautiful and heroic!
Susan Sink, as weak as a kitten but like a tiger, tiger shining bright.
Ugh. I think I’ll leave the similes up to Ms. Sexton. She had a much better handle on them.
I meant well, anyway. Sending you love.
Spectacular, Susan!
I am glad to know you through your posts. You are very positive. God bless you.
Congratulations, Susan, on such a great achievement with the completion of the novel. (I wrote one, a mere pastiche, and I understand the dedicated effort involved.) I hope that we get the chance to read it soon!
Wishing you continued strength in your cancer journey, Susan. I can’t wait to read your novel!
Thank you for sharing part of your life with us. I would love to read your novel if you’ll have me. 🙂
So grateful you are writing through, dear one. Grateful for your gifts and fortitude … for your courage to take a step, develop queries, revise and dream — even on foggy, down days. You are a gift to all. Praying you will know healing … and hope fulfilled.
Susan, my favorite poem happens to be by a not-white-dead-British guy. It’s a (now) old Canadian gal…Margaret Atwood. I keep trying to find a new favorite poem, but this one is the truest thing and never stops putting me where I need to be.
____
The Moment
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
____
I adore the idea of belonging to the trees, birds, cliffs, and air. So liberating. Thanks for letting me stand in your shadow for a little while, Susan.
Love, Manya
Thanks Manya. Lovely poem by Margaret Atwood.