Behind the Scenes At the Factory

Those of you keeping track might be wondering why "Is the Library Burning?", Novella #3 of the long delayed Escape Velocities collection isn't done yet. I'd promised to wrap the thing up by the end of August, but, well, I'll explain...

In mid-September, I'd reached page 90 of the novella. My financial problems were a distraction, but I'd still been able to maintain a decent rhythm. Writing long fiction is more a question of dogged, grinding work than inspiration, and after three years writing The Ice Age, that's the pace I'm accustomed to. Anyway, I'd reached the 90th page, when I found myself pausing and procrastinating. My thumbs started to hurt from late night Madden football games. Each time I tried to get back to work, I'd stare at the screen, tap keys, and move to check my e-mail or read news that hadn't changed in the five minutes since I'd last read it.

For a couple of weeks I blamed the stress of finances, but after my hearing at court, I came to realize the truth. I'd written ninety frigging pages and had no idea how to end the fucking story. If I went ahead with the ideas I had, the novella wouldn't so much end as it would splat, like a tomato thrown off a skyscraper. I spent a few days wavering between total panic and abject depression. Tutoring sessions and my birthday trip kept me grounded, but I couldn't see a solution and saw visions of four months of wasted effort--me and Sisyphus working for the same temp agency.

But then Seattle's horrible traffic came to my aid. On a day when it took me forty minutes to travel six miles, I went over the story in my mind. "Is the Library Burning?" is about a woman named Theresa who, while recovering in Cairo from injuries she suffered in a bus bombing, wonders whether she wants to return to the United States or move to the E.U. and leave the what she sees as the fanaticism of the U.S. behind. Included in her deliberations--most of which are about the deaths of Hypatia of Alexandria and Cicero, who failed to extract themselves from societies descending into tyranny before the mob could catch up with them--is the question of abandoning her mother, who fears travel. I realized while groaning at the hideous standstill of I-5, that while I'd done a good job exploring Theresa's thoughts on history and the decline of the U.S., I'd given the problem of her mother nowhere to go. They got along too well at the beginning, and their one argument over whether to leave the U.S. lacked a personal element. It was entirely ideological. I'd lost an opportunity to explore the larger issue of abandonment. I'd already established that Theresa was divorced. If I could work more in that area, perhaps making the divorce a source of tension between mother and daughter, I might solve the problem of the ending. The stakes can rise from the relatively narrow question of leaving the U.S. to the larger issue of the role of abandonment and disillusionment in Theresa's life.

Will it work? I don't know yet. I had to go back and do a lot of revising in the early sections. I feel like I have an ending in mind, but it remains to be seen whether this one will be the right one, or even mean what I think it means. Still, I feel a lot better at this point in the month than I did at the beginning, and I guess we will see what we will see.