True to my word, I have been reading more than I have been writing this year. I read Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres for the thousandth time, but this time I studied it, marking each scene. Then I paid my friendly neighborhood library a visit. It’s noisier there than I would like, but the deeper you get into the fiction section the noise fades to a distant drone. I wandered the aisles, pausing to grin at the placement of author Virgin next to author Virtue. I walked more and more slowly until I stopped altogether and surveyed the spines. Most of them were dusty. Many were faded. I wondered how many of them had been checked out recently, or ever. Most of the authors were foreign to me. I wondered when the Library would come though and weed out the underused books, the old and out-of-date books. What treasures would remain locked inside those books, hidden from the patrons, because some newly published writer (me?) had displaced them with their own shining jewels. It’s sad, really, the life cycle of a book. So few burn steadily into the literary canon; most are supernovas, blazing out all at once.

What will I be? Does it matter? Because I will still mourn the unloved books hiding on the shelves, hoping that they are not the weeds that will be pulled.

In January I made a resolution to begin The Great American Novel. And I have. From the end of August until this very morning, I have tried my hardest to write each day. Some days life interferes, but I haven’t let that prevent me from writing the next day.  Sometimes the Internal Editor interferes, but I’ve managed to gag her and lock her away in my mind.

And in-between writing sessions I’m brainstorming. Ideas keep appearing right before my eyes; I suddenly know not only where I’m going, but how to get there. Last night, for instance, a character spoke to me and her role in the novel has greatly expanded.

Still, I estimate I am only about 10% done with my work. I have a good outline to keep me on track, and I’ve written many, many scenes. But right now the scenes are only patched together. They do not yet make a cohesive whole. Ultimately my work is still a sketch with many scenes resting only on a post unconnected to the rest of the fence.

My plan now is to read. That’s right: not write, or edit, but read. I need a break from my work and I also need to study how my favorite writers sew their scenes into a chapter, their chapters into a novel.

And so Happy New Year’s to all, and to all — read a book before you turn out the light.

Someone once told me that “I am” is the most powerful statement you can make: I am strong, I am a woman, I am a writer. Begin a sentence with “I am” and you announce your intent to define yourself. I constantly define, redefine, overdefine myself. “I am fluid.”

At the same time I reject (or at least dismiss) definitions from the outside. Many have tried to define me. In fact it’s a standing dare. But outside definitions miss the mark. They can only view a fraction, a faction, of that which is Me. I exist on a timeline, but also outside the continuum, when my past self flows to the present and tandoms along. “I am complex.”

What bothers me most, or perhaps frightens, is being defined by my characters, which I am unable to dismiss as easily. I used to have alter egos, personas I used in my place in my stories. One was unsure and blundering, one sweet and happy, one wild and unhappy…. But now my characters are not me. They are amalgams, pieces of me that want out in random order. When my thoughts become penciled words on the page, when these words begin to breathe eraser dust and exhale an exclamation of characters and plots and settings, I no longer have control over what they say. I’ve loaned them bits of myself to guide them through the novel, but do you know which bits? Do you? Will you assume the worst, or deny that it is possible? Would you consider that I am both or neither? “I am undefined.”

And don’t you forget it.

I mentioned awhile back that I’m having some trouble with one of my characters. She keeps talking back to me, trying to go rogue. The good news is I’ve managed to shut the Inernal Editor up enough that she’s only a distant buzzing in my mind, and I can write, write, write.

Now my biggest problem is this character won’t stay in character. She’s supposed to be passive, but she keeps speaking up. At times she’s a know it all.

I think I may need the Internal Editor to come out of hiding and beat this character down. The only problem with that is then I may not get the Internal Editor to leave. She’s a pushy one.

An old friend and fellow writer stopped by the other night, and she told me about an acquaintance of hers that was living the writer’s dream: he’d rented a cabin in which to do nothing but sleep and write. Apparently a lot of writers are going all Walden Pond and holing up in a cabin somewhere to pound out The Great American Novel. I understand the premise. No distractions. Inspiration from nature. Finding yourself. But I don’t understand how a backwoods locale is more conducive to writing fiction, unless you’re writing about a backwoods locale. It reminds me of that movie with Chevy Chase, Funny Farm. Ironic enough, my friend said the owner of the cabin listed off a bunch of writers who rented from her for the same reason. We’d never heard of any of them.

For me, I like to write somewhere familiar, but private. When I lived with my parents, I wrote in my room. On the floor, on my bed, at my desk, in a pink Queen Ann chair. In my first house with Diver Dan in Kansas, I wrote in the dining room or on the back deck. Now I’ve claimed the sitting room off our bedroom as my space, and I write at a desk facing the windows (I promise, no stories about squirrels!).

My refusal to go Walden like these writers is because (gasp) I don’t take my inspiration from nature. Sure, spring makes me slow down and traispe through the mud, but I’m most likely headed to a baseball field to sit on the bleachers and daydream about baseball stories (but I do that any time I see a baseball field). And winter’s just cold.

So where does my inspiration come from? Random things. A name overheard at the airport. The smell of new books. Pictures. A good workout. Stuff I wrote years ago. And none of it is tied to the season or the sight of squirrels frollicking out my window.

And speaking of stuff I wrote years ago, it seems that I’ve been inspired in spurts. 1987 was a prolific year, as were 1995 and 2000. The years inbetween? Well, that’s when I worked on the ideas that I had in my banner years, and, as I told that college professor when he asked why I didn’t have more to show him after the summer break, I was living life. And now that I think about it, that’s really where my inspiration comes and why I could never isolate myself from the world:

Living my life inspires me to write.