After experiencing one of those life changing events that slam down without warning. I moved in a daze into a South Burlington condo with my dog and I found I could not write a coherent sentence. What I needed was to immerse myself in a dedicated community, no distractions, no meals to cook, dogs to walk. And – thank you fate – I was accepted at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, full fellowship, with a sweet suite to live in, a separate studio, great food and a vital, community. You could work all night, take meals at the commuter and interact as much as you wanted, no pressure.
I brought with me the novel I was working on. Technically, it was the middle of a second draft, but I was wrong. Time had gone by, my world and The World had ruptured, (e.g January 6th, the Trump election, floods, wild fires, species extinctions) and my characters had to be as crazed by all this as I was, something deeply human was ending, the end of the world as we knew it was no longer a concept, it was in process, we were in a dystopia, headed into trouble everywhere. My characters were still yapping away in my head, but now I was listening deeply, instead of imposing a story on them to navigate.
So what if I imagined a scenario where the worst was happening and planted my characters there. I had recently published a short story, very different than anything I had done before, it was speculative fiction, an actual genre, with a newly driven voice. So, what if I planted my characters in this world that was really dissolving. That I felt was pushing humanity in a direction we/they might not be able to navigate. So many questions, no answers, and that felt right. Asking those questions, I got it, I needed to start in a very different place and figure out how the people in my head were going to move through towards an ending, one that had always been clear in my mind but now was much more deeply loaded.
That week was like a em dash –––it led to a summer in a cabin by the lake, writing and reading and waking up. Whew.