Everything was going so well in January. I workshopped the first 50 pages of my new novel with my writing group and frigging slayed. Yes, I have to basically rewrite the whole thing, but other than that, the pages were awesome and everyone was super stoked with the plot, characters, and setting. Now all I have to do is up the stakes sooner and I’ll be golden.
The timing could not have been better. After receiving the feedback, my head filled with writerly possibilities, I packed my bags with lightweight clothing and headed to Miami with Brett for a little 25th wedding anniversary getaway at a boutique hotel in South Beach.
We took this trip for our first wedding anniversary, and therefore thought it would be a nostalgic and romantic gesture to sort of recreate that vacation now. And it was perfect. Great hotel, great food, great weather. We read lots of books and took long walks along the beach — and one of us (moi) even took dips in the ocean a few times, floating on my back, bright red pedicure sticking out of the turquoise waters. We were relaxed and suntanned, and, before we knew it, it was time to head home.
And then, plot twist.
Just as we were dressing to leave the hotel, I did something to my back. Like a nothing something. I looked at myself in the mirror and stepped my torso this way while my legs moved that way, and suddenly, I couldn’t move.
You know those glow sticks that you get for carnivals and bat mitzvahs? The ones that you crack in the middle and watch as the neon liquid seeps through the plastic and lights up with hot color? That was metaphorically what happened to my back. It lit up with glowing sensation. I couldn’t touch my toes. The pain was intense and I was blinded with panic.
How would I get into an Uber, through the airport, and onto the plane? What would become of me?!
I shuffled out of the rooftop dressing room and presented my broken self to my husband, asking him to tie my sneakers and hoping that this wasn’t foreshadowing what the next 25 years of our marriage would look like.
I had certainly upped the stakes.
It happens in just an instant, the way life can — and often does — get you. If you are lucky, you can recover fairly quickly with some prednisone (hallelujah to the glory of prednisone!) and bed rest and put the challenge behind you.
But, as we all know, true tragedy can flatten you in an instant, leaving you breathless and reeling. A car accident killed a friend of mine from high school in December. There was no goodbye for his family, no warning, and — that’s it? A whole life, just poof, gone? It makes no sense.
And that’s the difference between writing a story and living a life.
In a novel, cause and effect make sense. Authors carefully craft an arc for their characters that tests them and show growth while simultaneously entertaining the reader. Plot twists are designed to keep the reader hooked and turning pages. It’s why we read, or why I do, anyway, to experience the human condition from afar, and to live vicariously — my heart beating wildly at the drama, my tears flowing at the poignancy, feeling all the feels — yet knowing that I am safe.
Even though, of course, we are truly never 100% safe.
And now that I’m recovered, it’s time for me to return to the computer, to reacquaint myself with my characters and raising the stakes for them in a way that feels satisfying and realistic and interesting. I will enter the fantastical realm of fiction, where as artist I have all the control, cautiously optimistic that real life will also ultimately lead me to a happily ever after.
xo
Julie
First, I am so glad to hear that you will recover from this "twist" and that you continue to write.
I think what you are identifying can be multifarious...whether it's, for instance, a divorce that, even though it was imminent and freeing, still leaves a person untethered; a child who, suddenly and illogically, is not ok; or a circumstance or event affecting one's own body or mind. One of the best gifts that fiction gives the world is an opportunity to consider such a twist, develop empathy, and perhaps, if both reader and writer are lucky, feel less alone in the possibilities.
Love this! Glad you are on the mend and back at it!