Posted on July 6, 2009 - by sarahsamudre

Book Summer

Six years ago, I started writing a book called The Ashes. It began as a rambling analogy to something I was trying to communicate to my mother when we were out on a walk. It was a hot spring day, we were walking along the country roads, past the white fences protecting horses and alpacas and the other animals you find out here. I was talking to her about generational politics, tradition, problems people my age found with the church but what drew us to the ideals of the Church described in Acts. She wasn’t understanding, or rather (at that time only) was taking it so personally on behalf of people her age that she was missing my point. So I wove a tale about three women in one house, a deceased patriarch named Peter and a history of community parties the Grandmother and Grandfather had held that the granddaughter, Chloe, starts up again. Over the last 6 years, the story has evolved from just a simple analogy about the idealism of the young, the strictures of middle generations throughout all of time, and the examples that the elderly can forget that their own youth has set. It has taken on a life of its own that lives apart from its message and is just a damn fine story in its own right.

Read about what I’m doing after the jump:

The characters have become more than talking points and archetypes- they began to talk to me in my sleep, particularly one fine old chap named Arnold, who arrived last minute. He only walked into the fictional town of Monarch just last fall, when a lot of churches in California were lobbying against gay marriage in California. It might have been on the treadmill at the gym, where I seem to get the best new ideas for this book, but he appeared in my mind as a solution to so many questions that still rubbed me the wrong way. He soon became one of the best elements of the story, and it was clear I needed to rethink everything. So the ending changed, the middle got ripped open, sentences and imagery spilling out all over my desk.

The carnage has been a good thing. Once I looked at my book torn into pieces it was apparent that the last change that needed to take place was a point of view shift. The story started in Chloe’s shoes, and her first person narrative. But when Arnold came, the need for tragedy announced itself and the story went from something I toyed with every two months or so to something burning like a pillar of fire in my breast. I realized the story would be better from a third person limited omniscience, that is to say, I can follow everyone’s actions only, and give you a bit of my main character’s thought process, but only hers.

So a rewrite became necessary. Taking a story that was a sweet tale, I’ve darkened it, added a main character that changes 80% of things, and am switching the POV. I am doing this at 3,500 words a day. I am doing this six days a week. I am doing it so I can be done with it by September, give it to someone who knows how to get it published, and begin looking seriously at the sparks of a new story.

The writing is fun, because the story is already there. The characters are there. It’s almost like I’m directing a movie, and the other version of my novel is a shooting script. I am watching them act things out, and the hardest part is getting meditative enough to where I see the lighting, the subtle movements and describe that and only that. Chloe is still the main character, but the other characters are taking on dimensions that they didn’t have in the previous version. It’s incredibly gratifying, and the POV switch is one of the best decisions, and the hardest one to arrive at, that has happened with this book.

That’s what I’m doing with my summer.