thoughts on leaving Beach Haven, and on the making of a book

The ocean is behind me as I type; the day has come in.  I have been up since an early hour, at work again on Berlin.  I arrived here anxious, late Tuesday night:  Could I find my way to the end of this complex novel?  Could I honor Tamra Tuller, who invited me to write this book for her—her faith a gift like none other?  Many themes would have to find their way home.  Two storytelling voices would have to hold their own.  Tensions couldn't lag.  Research (oh, so much uncountable research) could never be confused with plot.  And don't forget love, which lies at this story's heart.  Don't forget what it is to love, and to wait.  Don't crowd that small big thing out with all that is Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, Little Istanbul and Stasi paranoia, bratwurst vendors and David Bowie.

Writing here has meant rewriting here, taking things apart.  It has required long walks and a settling in above the old laptop at 3 AM or 4 each day; I was here, after all, to write.  I had better make use of the days.  Clients await me.  The final projects of my beloved Penn students.  Reviews.  A contest or two to judge.  A son's graduation.  Interviews.  Small Damages.  If I couldn't do it here, I wouldn't do it at all.  I felt the pressure immensely.

This morning, at this hour, the book isn't done.  It is, however, intimately understood and my anxiety is gone.  There will be a storm here later today; in the gray dawn outside the waves are churning.  I will always be grateful to Beach Haven for letting me breathe, for restoring my own faith in me.  And I will always be grateful to my husband, too, who gave me room to work, who heard me, weeks and weeks ago, when I said, "I'd give anything for just a few, spare writing days."

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On page 200 of the Berlin novel, I stop

and allow myself to ponder how all of this (specifically) ends.  I am, perhaps, 5,000 words away from a first full draft.  In terms of plot and character, especially in terms of research, this is by far the most complex book I've ever attempted.  Every single word feels like a victory.  Every image is extracted from a graffiti-colored tangle.  I will work with and for clients on Monday, teach at Penn on Tuesday, then disappear for five days—the first time (these fifteen years into the writing of books, these sixteen books (not to mention an uncounted, embarrassing number of failures) in) I have ever gone away to be with a story, to be an author.  This book is that hard.  This book needs that much silence, and so do I. 

In the meantime, my boy is home for a day and a half.  The air is the right temperature for spring.

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you should write The Godfather

Yesterday, after sending the first 175 pages of my Berlin novel off to Tamra Tuller, whose dearness cannot be quantified, I sat and read those 35,000 words through again. I'd spent the day reading and editing and trimming, of course, and the day before that day doing the same, but there's something about sending your work to another that enables you to read the work newly—to read as a reader and not as a writer.  There is, of course, a difference.

My Berlin novel is a complex book.  The history it contains and reflects is complicated and important.  Kreuzberg is a crazy mix of punkers, immigrants, rebels.  Friedrichshain is riddled with spies and deprivation.  The characters have to be (for me) a new breed of people.  There have to be sub-plots and entanglements.  Still, as I read I asked myself questions:  Too complex?  Too entangled?  Should I bring the language down a notch?

At one point, my husband near, I pondered out loud.

He listened, briefly, then decided.  "People like simple stories," he said.  "You should write The Godfather."

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