The grammar of silence. Truth. Now.

I made the pot.

My husband took the photos.

I cling to these words as I write, as I turn the corner, finally, on a novel that has had me kicked to to the street and that I have at long last beaten back by digging deeper. There are no short cuts in writing fiction. I don't care what label they put on the book (children's book, young adult, crossover). A book won't come alive until each character is alive, until everything is known about them.

That everything includes, to borrow a phrase by Mark Slouka, who wrote brilliantly this weekend about Paul Harding's Enon, in The New York Times Book Review, the grammar of silence.

We cannot write, or I cannot write, until, in each book, I master the grammar of silence. The places in between the action. The words that can't be said.

This took me an especially long time this time around. I didn't give up. I'm proud of that. I still have work to do.

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