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.