Among the many, many, many things that I didn’t know about writing books until I managed to actually write one was that, even if you are one of the blessed few to have published something and to have a terrific agent and a mind bustling with new projects, you’ll still encounter long, hollow stretches where you find yourself, quite simply, with nothing to do.
This isn’t entirely a defect. Stories gestate in boredom. You need empty time to research, to outline, to drop plot ideas into a cup, shake them around and see what rolls out. But in the meantime my fingertips get itchy for a keyboard, and bits of language accumulate in the corner and gather dust.
So, In Between Days.
This is a place for me to write when I’m not writing, to explore ideas, themes, anxieties, and impressions that fall outside the scope of whatever novel I’m currently losing my head in—since I’ve never had even a half-decent idea for a short story, and not for lack of trying. It’s a place where—if you’ll join me—we can discuss books, shows, music; where we can roll our collective eyes at Twitter’s latest absurdity, where we can suss out what makes good writing hum, and how we might do it more often.
It will also be a place for me to exercise my actual voice, one belonging to me and not to my characters. It’s one I’m rarely called on to use. I write fiction, and although I do believe that writers have styles—some a rolodex full, to employ as the situation demands, others one they return to, and nurture like a child—I’m skeptical of the popular notion that any fiction writer has a single authorial voice, reflective somehow of their deepest self. Fiction is a lie. Good fiction is a good lie, told well. To write a novel is to be deeply invested in creating a new and unique thing, which has referents in the real world but is not beholden to it, and not in any true sense a representation of it. So whether I’m writing fiction in first person or third, the voice I use belongs to that new thing, and not to me.
That’s a topic I’ll return to in more detail, but for now it’s enough to say that In Between Days is a space for my own voice, rather than the voice of whatever depraved and loathsome (and occasionally, one hopes, redeemable?) person happens to be narrating my next book. I plan on sending these out once every few weeks, though that number may go down when I’m burrowed deep inside a work in progress, and trend up when I surface.
First post should be out next week. I hope to see you there.