Returning back to life – this is the current state of affairs in many countries and people. Slowly but surely, the last stores are reopening; people are taking off their masks.
Yes, they are even planning vacations and getaways. Slowly but surely, restaurants are allowed to stay open longer. Slowly but surely, children are allowed to go back to school. Slowly but surely, people are returning to their old-new reality.
This is my case as well. But for different reasons: Yesterday was a special day.
I finished my latest round of editing for my new novel, and after that, I cried a bit, as people usually do in such moments.
My book will come out in the fall, this year, published by the largest publishing house in Germany. This is my second novel. And as some of you know, writing the second novel is the worst, because when you start writing it you ask you yourself how did you ever come around to writing the first one, and then you get scared from those who write book reviews in the press, because they either totally ignore the second novel or tear it up mercilessly.
But the past 18 months of writing with uncertainty and fear, and the prognosis for a very dark future played no role in my mood yesterday. Because yesterday was just about the characters in the story that I had spent the past 18 months with and now we had to part ways. Bye-bye Nikka, bye-bye Noam, bye-bye Traneg, Mayan, Easolet, Roza, Leah and Doar. Bye-bye to the violence and the passing down of trauma through the generations. Bye-bye to the fractures and crises of life, those that you have to accept and those you cannot ignore. Bye-bye to the content of my life story. Because this is how writing a novel is, and how writing this novel was.
Writing has livened up my life every day for the past 18 months. I missed my best friends' birthdays, I missed dinners and lunches and parties. I didn't really do anything. I didn't do anything but work for the past 18 months. This weekend is supposed to be the first weekend in many weeks in which I will actually be free. I may be free, but I will not feel particularly free, but rather a bit lonely. I will feel deserted because my characters will have left me due to my novel being complete.
This is because for a writer, there is nothing more beautiful than not having to be part of the real world, the actual world. At least that's the case with me. I like to live inside my books, and inside my manuscripts, and I like the fact that I have a good excuse to not having to take part in day-to-day life.
"I am sorry, I can't come with you to the concert today, because I have to write!", this is the ultimate excuse. There is not a single person in this universe for whom these words will cause disappointment. Absolutely no one. Everyone shows a great deal of understanding, whether they are authors ("O, God, the poor soul is writing a novel, what a nightmare," they must be thinking) and whether they are not authors ("WTF? A novel? I have not idea how to do that").
I bid farewell, with great affection, to my edited text, and I now leave it to its own devices. Its fate will send it on a long journey, a journey that will bring it to many hands of readers, to hands who will like my text and hate it, and find it too stupid or somewhat acceptable.
My characters, the ones I love like my own child, are now on their own, to the best of their ability. From this moment onward, they are no longer my dependents, but my life actually depends on them. Just like a real mother in real life.
