Between Chapters One and Two: Book Three. Essay.

“The universe is delivering again?”

     The last time the writer had typed those words, she was midway through Book Two. Her protagonist was sitting in a comfortable chair in the polished executive office of a large bank, being unexpectedly terminated from her leadership role. The room was calm, orderly and strangely ordinary for a moment that was about to rearrange her life.

“I prayed for more time,” the protagonist had thought, “but this was not my plan.”

 It felt as though her Formula One racing car had hit the side of the track. Life would never be the same. It wasn’t. What followed was fast-paced and filled with upheaval, discovery and transformation. The writer knew what to do with the material, and in the end, Book Two became a story people connected with deeply. It followed Book One, another transformation story, and together the two books had a satisfying rhythm. The first had been about becoming. The second had been about ambition, adversity and achievement. Now the writer was on to Book Three. It had no title. One chapter had been written, and then nothing.

     Or perhaps just one line.

     In Chapter One, the protagonist becomes a writer. It is action-packed, an entire MBA compressed into a single chapter. A Master’s in Becoming an Author. The writer is excited. The new book follows the thread and tone of the first two. But then she hits a block. It is not the usual kind of writer’s block, where nothing makes it onto the page. It feels more like an invitation to stop and align the words with the pace and wisdom of what the writer now knows to be true: trust emergence. Even more unsettling, the writer begins to feel that she is the protagonist. The roles blur. The story becomes unclear. Who is writing whom? She considers the possibility that this is a trilogy and that Book Three might be called The Evening of Life. There are not many books on the subject to study. Most of the available titles seem to be business books about maximizing retirement funds. The writer turns instead to Eastern traditions. This is more encouraging. There, the wisdom of elders is considered an asset, valued and sought by younger generations. Age is not simply a process of diminishing. It can be a deepening.

 The writer reflects on how much the protagonist evolved in Book Two. It had been so easy to write fiction. Following a professional quake, which had itself followed a biological earthquake brought on by a discovery about her paternity, the protagonist learned that identity is far more than a job. It is more than biology, and even more than culture. Identity is fluid. Perhaps it is like water, the writer thinks. Water can become ice, steam, snow or rain, yet it remains water. Its form changes, but its essence does not disappear. This had been wonderful material for fiction. The words flowed magically onto the page: sentences, paragraphs, chapters, the whole thing. The protagonist could transform freely because the writer was in control. She knew the arc. She understood the themes. She could move the story forward at exactly the right pace. But now, sitting in front of the open Scrivener document and trying to begin Chapter Two, the writer longs to change the way she writes. Instead of planning every chapter, she wonders,

“What if I became a discovery writer?”

     For a planner to become a pantser, a writer who allows the words to reveal the path rather than following a predetermined plan, would require more than a different writing method. It would require a different way of being. The writer, suspended between chapters, begins planning how to stop planning. She tries to create structure for surrender. She attempts to become an instrument of the words instead of forcing them to become instruments of her will. It is, in effect, an exercise in deprogramming. She feels like a golf professional who has taught a student a new swing, only to watch the student become unable to hit the ball at all. It is tempting to return to the old swing. At least the ball moved forward. In the suspension, the writer begins to experience a kind of osmosis with her character.  Is this another Formula One crash for the protagonist, or for the writer? Or is it nothing so dramatic? Is this simply what growth feels like when one opens the heart to it? Both writer and protagonist seem to be growing into something, but neither knows what. The writer has never been good at not knowing what happens next.

     The space between chapters is a place she has never dared to remain. There was always another destination, another plan, another page to turn. The in-between was not part of the story. But what if the space between the chapters was the story? The writer returns to the open Scrivener document and begins typing furiously. No, gently. No. Does it even matter? Perhaps more time is required between chapters to absorb what has been learned. Who, after all, is teaching whom? The writer remembers that she is very good at writing down lessons and telling other people what to do. Do as I say, not as I do. But Book Three asks something different of her. It asks her to stop rushing toward the next version of herself and to trust that, like water, she can change form without losing her essence. The words that arrive on the page do not always need to be fully understood. Perhaps they need only to be received, nurtured and allowed to reveal themselves, first to the writer and then to the reader. 

The protagonist looks at the open Scrivener document.

   “What? The universe is delivering again?”

 This time, it has not delivered the answer to a request or prayer. It has delivered the space in which she might become ready to receive. Perhaps there is magic in not knowing. The writer begins to understand that growth is what happens between the chapters.