Launching Novel #5 Past the Asteroid Belt

I have written five novels in my life. This is not a boast, but an admission, since only one of the five has so far made it to the bookshelves, and that was right at the end of the last millenium. The next three are in the proverbial ‘drawer’ and the fifth, well, that was only just really finished this week so its fate is anyone’s guess. If you were a betting sort of person though, and you looked at the odds, you might be forgiven for thinking novel #5 is a long shot in the field.

I, however, am not a betting sort of person. Plus I am a hopeless optimist. I was thinking about that phrase today as I drove to work: isn’t it an oxymoron, to be a hopeless optimist? Nevertheless, that is what I am. And as a novelist in this world, it’s most likely a really good thing. Because the odds of getting your literary fiction novel published in 2018 sometimes feel less than the odds of riding shotgun in Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster past the asteroid belt.

Nevertheless, the excitement of finishing a novel in a way that feels right and just cannot be understated. I have been working on this novel since last July. I wrote a euphoric and fairly full first draft in just 48 days, a record by any mad novelist’s standards. Then I spent seven months “onwriting” 22 further chapters to the novel. See my earlier blog posts (or just watch The Wonder Boys). By the start of this Spring, I was really starting to wonder when an ending would ever present itself. But based on experience, I knew that it eventually would.

Around 5am one morning last week, wide awake with my usual predawn insomnia, the ending to my novel wrote itself out. I had started the last chapter the day before, after getting the idea on the treadmill at the gym, and I knew from the feel of it that it was the final chapter of the book. It had a quality none of the other ‘extra’ chapters had had. It wrapped up two of the important storylines. It featured all the main characters in one place in a pivotal scene. It had vital comic elements, it felt very final, and it sort of wrote itself.

Somehow I had to decide how much of the extra chapters to include between the original ending and the new final chapter. Most of those chapters are what Hemingway referred to as the iceberg: everything below the surface that informs what you actually show your readers. You know, that small cold block that sank the Titanic. Unhelpful metaphor. Moving right along.

I put about seven new chapters in and tinkered with it until it felt whole. Printed it out. Cover letter for the publisher. Ready to send. No idea if there’s a market for it. Frankly, it’s a little scary to think about finishing the thing. I mean, what will I do now when I’m awake from 3-5am? I miss my characters, so I guess there’s no reason to stop writing their story for my own private fun. I could do what Grady Tripp in The Wonder Boys did: just keep typing till the page number starts with a 2 and has 3 digits after it...

Rider Down

Three miles into my training ride this morning, a firetruck passed me going up White’s Hill, sirens blaring. At the summit of the hill, a bicyclist was down. The firetruck was parked skewed across the road to stop traffic and paramedics were strapping the guy to a backboard. There was a car. It did not look good. A cop was letting through all of the cyclists clustered at the top of the hill. As we passed him, he kept repeating “bicyclist accident” as though we could have missed this alarming and sobering fact.

When I see someone in trouble like that, my nursing instincts kick in. Despite the paramedics present, so clearly better qualified than me to tend to the guy on the ground, I have a strong urge to stop and help. Instead, aware that in that situation I was just another passerby, I passed by on my bike, whispering wishes for his wellbeing, freedom from pain, quick recovery. May you be back on your bike soon, my friend.

Sure puts a dent in the ride, to see something like that and be reminded of the fragility of our wellbeing as we share the road with 4,000-pound chunks of metal travelling at fifty miles per hour. I rode on, grappling with my fear for my own safety; with the fear I had been feeling when I woke in the night about attempting a 60-mile training ride solo; and with the general sense that I experience in my work as a hospice nurse that life is only loaned to us for a pretty brief span of time. Everyone’s destination is the same.

But the beauty of the day, the abundance of wildflowers in the ditches, and the sun on my face and skin gradually erased the distress of seeing the accident. By the summit of Big Rock, I was back on top of the ride, looking forward to taking a selfie at the crest of the hill I sometimes drive during work hours between patients. When I took out my phone, there was a panicked text from my daughter. A fireman friend of hers had let her know there was a biker down on White’s Hill just about ten minutes after I left the house. What were the odds? I texted her back right away: I’m fine. I saw him, but I’m safe. 

And there at the summit, perfectly placed to enhance the mood of relief, was a guy in a giant clown suit. As I took my selfies, riders began to stream by in the opposite direction. Watch out on the downhill, guys, said the clown over and over. Then I spotted a jersey: it was a training ride for the AIDS ride! My Climate Ride sort of pales in comparison to what these riders do. San Francisco to Los Angeles, 7 days, 545 miles. All the way down Big Rock mountain and out to 101, I passed hundreds of them. Boy, did I feel like the one fish swimming the wrong way in the river!

There was something extra sweet about making it home after the ride today. Just the feeling of opening my gate and pushing my bike through was pretty special. Someone didn’t make it home today. All afternoon, I quietly celebrated being alive, being safe, being lucky. And then I went grocery shopping and accidentally bought a tub of Ben & Jerry’s “The Tonight Dough.” No, I am not making this up. New flavor. Caramel and Chocolate Ice Creams with Chocolate Cookie Swirls and Gobs of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough & Peanut Butter Cookie Dough. Yeah. Good to be alive...

If You Ride Up Hills, It’s Your Own Fault

I was chatting with a biking friend this evening, someone who has been riding many more years than me and has also undertaken things that would kill me, such as marathons. She mentioned a hill that is close to us. It happens to be a hill I have to ride up in order to gain access to the vast riding paradise of West Marin. This hill divides East from West Marin and is thus a cultural as well as a topographic landmark. It also happens to be a real bitch to ride up. I vividly remember the first time I was able to ride it without stopping. I thought I would burst a lung.

The road up White’s Hill has numerous twists and turns and even when you know it well, like I do, from driving it fifty thousand times, it’s hard to remember on the bike how many stretches of the hill are left. The only thing I ever know is that the bridge stretch comes last. When you can see the bridge, you are almost there. However, by the time I see the bridge, I am always so exhausted that the sight of it entirely fails to cheer me, because the other feature of the bridge is that it’s about the steepest stretch of the whole hill. So not only am I perilously close to the end of my strength by the time the bridge comes into view, but I now realize I have the very hardest stretch of the hill left to do. The fact that it is also the last stretch generally fails to thrill me at that point, since one or both of my lungs are about to burst.

My friend had a beautifully succinct way of describing her feelings upon riding White’s Hill, specifically the moment when the bridge comes into view: “F**K you!” I know that feeling really well, but had somehow imagined I was the only one who ever feels it, since all the other riders about seem to power fairly gleefully up hills and are always talking about even steeper hills they have ridden than the one that just nearly made me give up and sit on the side of the road with my bike and cry.

There is a hill that starts about an eighth of a mile from my front door and goes all the way up into the stratosphere, and probably beyond. Even when I am driving it (which is the only way I have ever gone up it) I am constantly thinking what an utterly endless hill it would be to ride. Thus, it is a big goal of mine to get on my bike one day and ride it. I know that one day I will be able for it. I just wonder when that day will be. It sort of feels like the day one would choose to give birth. You know, eight months and twenty-nine days pregnant, you wake up one day and go, ok! today I really want to go into labor!

But I can imagine the rush of actually summitting Pine Mountain. Plus there would be the impressively drawn-out reward of riding back down it: part euphoria, part terror, as it is extremely narrow and windy and there are no barriers of any sort. Puh! Barriers! This is the birthplace of mountain-biking we are talking about. This is where repack was invented!

So one weekend day, in the near or distant future, I will get up at first light, have three cups of coffee and maybe some methamphetamines, and then I will ride up Pine Mountain. I’m going to do it on my own, in case I have to get off a few times and cry, or reinflate my lungs. But when I get to the top, you can bet I will be taking a selfie because I take selfies on all my rides, and they uniformally feature big silly grins. My plan is to have them all printed one day and make a ride album. However, this will just be for me, I will not be inflicting it on any of my long-suffering friends. They already have way too many fb posts of my training rides cluttering up their feeds.

And when I have taken the selfie, I will get back on my bike and brave the prolonged rush down Pine Mountain. And then I will go home and have more coffee, maybe even some eggs, or maybe just lie on the couch for a few months. And then it will be time for some other hill: some steeper, longer, more insane climb that makes Pine Mountain look like White’s Hill.