Beginnings are crazy - stressful, exciting, full of promise, terror, teases, but they are necessary whether trying to get a reader to Chapter 2 or starting a new year in a completely new place than the year before.
In the last few whirlwind months, I managed to get to the end of my novel-in-progress in the sketchiest, this-is-a-draft kind of way. The end. It happened.
And I met someone.
In the time between my penultimate and final semester of my MFA, both my writing life and personal life blossomed in unexpected ways. As it happens with my program, the end of a term is a prompt for the following residency, so before my month away from academic life could start, I crafted a new beginning for the novel. I took some risks. I changed points of view. Got graphic, but not so far that my reader has to turn away. If I've done this well, my character will creep into the story, creating a bond that maybe didn't exist before. The stakes are high. Her story is personal, emotional, resonant.
I work-shopped it earlier this month and there was no question about whether that was the right move. Of course, I have edits to make, slight course corrections, areas to sharpen. I am learning my way through. But it seems that my risks of late are paying off. I have my work cut out for me this term - revising the entire novel beginning to end by May - but I face it with my own sense of optimism, mixed with a little anticipatory fear, the secret sauce for good work. It means that I am committed. That I will work hard because it's important to me.
The challenge will be to allow myself time to process as I go along. I'll be using some unfamiliar structures, new voices, and I need to let them tell me where the road is when I wander off my original path. But I feel sure that my instincts are sound, that I am where I am supposed to be.
This will be a year of changes, of deadlines, possible missteps, of celebrations, but also of faith - even confidence - that my story will play out as it should. I hope yours does as well. Embrace your new beginnings.
When it works, you know.
