Sequel

The sequel to DG is coming fast and furious like an actual brainstorm. All I can do is try to jot down notes and hope the stuff I can't catch will be there when I get to the place in the book where it belongs. 

After I finished DG, I took a novel writing class because it was being taught by one of my writing mentors, who had also been my professor and editor a long time ago. I met two amazing writers there and was in a zoom writing group with them for I think around 6 months. They're both really talented, and it was especially satisfying because I got to help the short story writer recognize how good he is and why. I hope to see his book of short stories out someday. The woman is an amazing human who actually made a living as a writer in Hollywood for a decade or so and had even directed a short film she wrote that had some famous actors in it. But she hasn't written a novel yet. I was the only one in the class besides the teacher who had, and I felt like they sort of treated me like I knew something. All I knew was what I personally experienced, and I suspect it's different for everyone, but I think I'll make a note of it as it's happening this time.

Last spring I was working at the public defender's office and saw about four cases come in where women (always women) had been sent to the psych ward on holds, had events (likely provoked) with security or nursing staff, then were arrested, sent to jail and charged with felonies. One of the cases was especially heinous because the woman was locked in her bathroom trying to kill herself when cops broke the door down and dragged her to the psych ward. She was charged with assault for kicking, spitting, and cursing at them ... in the middle of having a mental crisis after being grabbed by police. That's when I knew there was a sequel to DG. After Kate gets rescued and taken for her mandatory three days in the booby hatch, that's what happens to her. I knew that throughout the novel, her PTSD "superpowers" (where she does brave things to defend people or animals that normal people wouldn't do and that are a threat to her life and liberty) would be a continuous threat to her continued sobriety, sanity, and upward arc toward a better life.

Then I read Walter Mosley's Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and saw how that very fear that someone with Kate's issues lives with of fucking everything up can be the suspense that carries the plot. It's also true in The Shining, come to think of it.

And then I saw how Jayne could be on an overlapping arc going down while Kate's arc is going up just like they were before with Kate going down and Jayne going up, and that they could join forces at the end for a major blow-up that either kills them both or sets them both on the path upwards.

It's been slowly coming in small pieces like that but it wasn't until I finished a bunch of tasks and got to the place where - right now - I have a few weeks to do almost nothing but write. It's one last chunk of free time before I (hopefully) get back to work. For the last two nights I laid in bed and let my mind figure out that overlapping plot. Then all the details from various experiences started to snow down on me. I've caught enough now that it's time to write. As each scene reveals itself to me, I feel exhaustion thinking about how much work will be involved in capturing it, but I know it will be a relief once I get it out. Like childbirth or gas.

Do you know what writing a book is like for me? I have to let myself be possessed.