Not long ago I posted
here about an extremely gifted artist, Meera Lee Patel, whose delicate and
soulful renderings of atmospheric worlds grace tea towels and greeting cards, tote bags and journals, even slingy chairs. You can find her work on Etsy and in Free People. You can follow her musings over Twitter, her process sketches on Instagram, her hope for the world in every line she draws, and next year Perigree Books will be releasing her book
Being Me (But Better). I can't actually imagine a better Meera Lee, but I'm eagerly anticipating her book.
Yesterday, as a cadre of painters and window caulkers and windowsill fixers and stucco men finished the rescue of my modest bungalow home, a gift arrived from Meera, a package of most precious things. Number 37 of 50 of her keepsake
Elephant and Moon (her illustrated story of an elephant seeking his place in the world). A handmade card:
Grateful. A postcard. Her long-lettered words to me. She is so utterly embrace-able, this Meera Lee. And I am enormously lucky to have her in my life.
For look, above, at what she makes.
Soon, here, you'll find another inimitable work of art from Meera Lee, for Chronicle Books had the extraordinary stroke of genius to hire her as the cover artist for
One Thing Stolen, the Florence novel due out next April. I've not yet seen the final cover. I have seen the intricate, intelligent watercolor. I can't wait to hold this book in my hand, for Meera's reading of the novel was so astute; her discovery of the small details make her cover illustration sing.
One Thing Stolen, which has a rare neurological disease at its heart, was not an easy book to write; it was, in fact, heartbreaking as I imagined myself inside the mind of frightened young girl. It emerged out of many drafts and deep considering. I stumbled until at last I found the light, and then I waited. Before I'd even seen a glimpse of Meera's cover art, I'd heard from Meera—words from a reader that will always matter to me.
Gift upon gift upon gift. And then yesterday's package.
When the cover art is ready for sharing, you will find it along with an interview with Meera here. Between now and then, Meera, the atmosphere is, as you write in
Elephant and Moon, "feelings and fabrics from lifetimes before."
That Florence novel of which I have so often spoken is also (I now confess) a West Philadelphia novel—infused with the fringe beyond the campus where I work. Yesterday, the air finally warming, I returned to those old haunts and photographed this plot of land, where a pivotal scene takes place.
That Florence novel is also, thanks to the great (loving) patience of editor Tamra Tuller and the impeccable copy editing and exceptional kindness of one Debbie DeFord Minerva, done. Oh my goodness, it is done. The hardest book I ever wrote. The fear that it would not be "good enough," finally ebbed in full this weekend, as I took one last crack at the pages that had resisted me for many months. In the midst of that work, a note (and then more notes) from Debbie filtered in.
Sometimes the impossible is not finally impossible.
And we are rarely alone.
It's almost spring, or should be soon. The hard husks inside the earth are softening. The nests are wanting eggs.
My Florence novel is also a West Philadelphia novel.
That novel is finally done.
I'm not just teaching sixteen memoir makers this semester at Penn. I'm also working with the very talented Alice Ma, whom I selected from a strong field of applicants as the Bassini Writing Apprentice. Alice returns me to my novel-in-progress. We think together about what kind of research must fuel a novel like this one, what questions must be answered, and how truth becomes fiction of an engaging but authentic sort.
There's been one small problem with this arrangement. Too many consecutive twenty-hour work days have left me no time for the novel-in-progress. So there is Alice, pursuing questions. And here has been Beth, suggesting in theory.
I had promised myself and others that I would right that tilted ship this weekend, and today I honored the pledge. I had 30,000 words of the novel, banged out during a few weeks last fall. Today I printed those pages, sat beneath a blanket, and forced myself to sit and read. If there was some horrid stuff, and there was some horrid stuff, there was also a book that makes me happy. Happy to work on. Happy to pursue. Since the best part of the writing life is the writing, in my humble opinion, I better be happy to pursue.
Having spent this day righting the wrongs of my in-progress novel, I will spend tomorrow writing forward. I will be afraid, very afraid. And I will let the fear propel me.
When you write as I do—in between things and only after everything else is done—you begin to wonder if this percolating creature is any good, if you will want it (someday) to belong to you. I have been working at the oddest hours of night on Florence, then putting the novel aside, then returning. I have not been able to hold the whole in my hands. I have been frustrated by fragments.
Last night, in the sweetest chocolate fold of 4 AM, I returned to Florence, read these first 120 pages through. It coheres, I think, and it interests me deeply. It is the book that I want to keep writing.
And so I send the first 25,000 words to Tamra Tuller, now at Chronicle Books. I want the conversation we will have as this story and its people take me deeper into their strange and (to me) beautiful and abiding mystery.
It was probably the chocolate - but I did pray some heartfelt stuff for you at around 1:00 a.m. That Old Guy upstairs has a great ear for listening. ;)
I care. Oh, I care. I care. You know I care.
How wonderful!