The Spider Season
The first one was waiting in the kitchen, pre-dawn. The cats ran down the hall ahead of me, their wriggly, wiry little bodies ever-joyful to start a new day. Little Kitty and Petey dropped to their bellies and began batting the thing back and forth, like some feline version of air hockey. Without my glasses, the creature was a blur, but I managed to scoop her up in an empty Bonne Maman jam jar and escort her to the safety of a patio lavender plant.
I'm afraid I wasn't as benevolent a few days later when I came upon another lounging in relative ease behind a sofa throw pillow. The vacuum hose was already in hand, the motor drowning out the "Fuck Me" I let loose in startled horror. I emptied the canister, full of cat hair and sand, into the compost. I'm sure she's fine.
And then the next day, I turned around in the shower to wait out the requisite one minute of conditioner soak-in and encountered one the size of a small island nation nestled in a fold of the shower curtain. Cue Psycho's mad violins. I couldn't be bothered to rinse or even turn off the faucet. I stepped dripping into the hallway, saying in my most calm, stern, General-at-Battle voice, "Andrew. I need you to come here immediately." I disavow all knowledge of what happened next. Really, I'm trying to put the entire horror show behind me.
Yes. It's Spider Season. You may have noticed how the light has changed in recent days, deepening into its late summer denim blue and burnished gold. Summer delivered her hottest days over the weekend, but early mornings hold a freshness that has me reaching for my favorite, stretched-out-beyond-hope cardi-hoodie.
Another season is passing into the next. When I look back at my journal of two seasons ago, mid-March, I read with wistful melancholy my assumption that by late June, summer, this would be behind us. This is now nearly nine months old, if I count back to that January day when I was asked at the clinic's reception if I'd traveled to China in the past two weeks.
I'm taking a precious few days off, the first day job PTO in over a year.
I'm not going anywhere. Oh, believe me. I'd love to. I haven't been more than 50 miles from home since last fall. I dream of road trips, of numbing flights. I dream of Ireland, Iceland, Iberia. But now is not the time, not for me. I will remain close, tend to my garden. To my sweetheart.
Last June I rented an AirBnB and hid away, alone, to accrue some serious word mileage on my novel. I thought by the same time next year, I'd have a polished draft in to my agent.
Just like I thought all of this would be behind us by now.
Didn't happen.
But I do have a novel in revision. And days of peace to do the work.
Why yes. That is a glass of rosé in a jam jar, on my desk.
Yesterday, after three 10-hour butt-in-chair days, I finished Draft 4, Revision 3 of The Deep Coil (as a point of reference, by the time my novels reach the bookstore shelf, they've been through upwards of 30 revisions. Not sure why I think any of this is anything other than complete madness.)
If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you know I'm not much of an outliner or plotter — completely counter to my Virgo tendencies in most other aspects of life. I write from character and trust the plot will catch up. This current revision was to bring those two elements into alignment, a structural revision to weave the heart (the internal journey, my protagonist's arc) and the head (the external conflicts, aka, the plot) together into the web of story.
Art is fire plus algebra - Jorge Luis Borges
Although I'm a pantser, I'm a big believer that we're hard-wired for story, that, as Lisa Cron states in her fantastic 2012 book, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence: "there is an implicit framework that must underlie a story in order for that passion, that fire, to ignite the reader's brain. Stories without it go unread, stories with it are capable of knocking the socks off someone who's barefoot."
In the revision just completed, I searched for that implicit framework, the inevitability of my protagonist's actions and reactions based on who she is, how her past has shaped her belief systems, and what she believes she wants at the point we meet her, and how that, and she, change through the course of the story.
Even though the revision revealed structural weaknesses, ankle-snapping plot holes, and myriad scenes to be written, the story's foundation is there, solid and sound and ready to be built upon.
I woke to the sound of rain this morning, blessed, cool, healing rain. On this autumnal teaser of a day I set aside triumph at the completion of another revision and turn to Page One, Chapter One, to begin Draft 5, Revision 4.
Weave On, Writers. Attention aux Araignées.