The Do-Over Fantasy
If nothing else, it makes for great reading
Before we begin…
A genie comes along and grants you one chance at a do-over. Would you take it? What would you do over? And would you do it differently? Then there is simply starting over which seems different somehow and, also, more challenging. What can you share about starting over from your own experience?
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What about Eve?
Have we talked about my obsession with the do-over before? We’ve certainly talked around it. The lure of the “do-over” fantasy is powerful and, I suspect, has been torturing humans since the dawn of time. Consider, for example, the part of Eve’s story left out of the book of Genesis. You can’t tell me that Eve didn’t spend a lot of sleepless nights reliving that moment when she gave into the snake and chomped down that apple.
Dig down to the roots of my most frequent do-over fantasies and you will certainly find regret along with a side of shame: the words I wish I could eat, the patience I failed to exhibit, the drinks I wished I’d refused, the opportunity I’d failed to seize.
There are moments, though, that I would love to live over again just as they unfolded. The birth of my son. Both of my weddings - the one that led to failure and the one that continues to thrive and to nourish me. The day I graduated from college. The moment I learned a large publisher wanted my first novel. A few others. I would love to relive the sense of possibility in each of these moments, that sense that I’d found my place in this world.
Perhaps, though, the more interesting question is how to go on when there is no possibility of a do-over. This was the underlying question that drove my first novel and continues to rear its head in the one I’m working on now. In the first book, the desire for a do-over is driven by regret but, in this one, the story is driven mostly by possibility for something new, a change that arrives unexpectedly and not at all in the form that anyone expected. The underlying question in this novel asks if there is a point when one is too old, too scared, too jaded to make that change.
A person I love faced this question about five years ago. After launching and relaunching his business, his relationships, and moving from a place he thought was home to another place he hoped would become home, he wondered if he had what it took.
“I don’t know how many new starts I have left in me,” he said.
In the absence of a do-over, the best most of us can hope for is the opportunity to start again, make new beginnings on the ashes or the foundation of what came before. It’s hard work, perhaps the hardest there is. Ask anyone who keeps choosing to be sober even after many relapses. Ask the refugee who has no home to return to and must find a new one in a country that does not welcome her. Ask the widow who must rebuild her life as she grieves.
“I don’t know how many new starts I have left in me,” he said.
I saw all this much more clearly when, this week, I opened a new blank document and began to write my second novel from the beginning. The real questions emerged in sharper focus. The parts I knew I needed were still fresh in my mind. If I needed anything from the old draft, it was right there like a security blanket. This new version will be new but it will reflect what I’ve learned from the thousands of words I am now letting go and the few that are good enough to keep.
I didn’t know that I would be doing this. Before Christmas, I would have said yes to a genie if she’d offered me the chance to go back a few years, before I’d chosen to write this book with these characters and these questions. I would have said yes if the genie had offered me the chance to go even further back in time and let me be born without the desire to write.
But, no genie. No do-over. Only the results of the choices I’ve made so far and the chance to make new ones. I’ll take it.
Starting Over: Two Novels, A Memoir, and How One Writer Chucked it All
The Novels
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. This book came up in correspondence last week with another Spark subscriber who, like me, believes this book is Atkinson’s masterpiece. Ursula Todd, the central character of this historical novel, is born then dies multiple times throughout the book. Each “life” brings her closer to a moment when she and she alone can alter the course of World War II. She is basically starting over in each chapter and, as her story alters, so does the story of those around her. The structure of this book is unusual but never confusing. Atkinson shows us what remains constant and what does not when even one element in a life’s story changes.
The Do-Over by Suzanne Park. I’ve not read this but it is one of a ton of novels out there that explicitly claim the “do-over” fantasy. In this case, a successful career woman is forced back to college and comes face to face with her former boyfriend who seems to be living a life that is very different from her high-powered one but, possibly richer in those things that matter. This one looks fun and I’ve heard great things about Park who is also a comedian.
The Memoir
Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over by Nell Painter. Called “cup of courage for everyone who wants to change their lives” by Tayari Jones (An American Marriage), Painter’s memoir follows her journey from a well-regarded sixty-something Princeton professor and historian to a student of art at the Rhode Island School of Design. Jones, a writer I admire, says Painter brings to bear “incisive insights from two careers” and “weaves a frank, funny, and often surprising tale of her move from academia to art in this glorious achievement--bighearted and critical, insightful and entertaining.”
The Essay: Chucking It All Out And Starting New
“When It’s Time to Start Over” by Ruthanne Reid describes how she abandoned every word of a book she’d been working on for years and started with, literally, a blank page. No “darlings” survived. I broke out into a sweat when I read what she did.
More Books
Just Finished
A Girl Called Rumi by Ari Hornavar – In many ways, a refugee’s story is the ultimate “starting over” story. With A Girl Called Rumi , Hornarvar explores how fleeing one home to settle in another can be both hopeful and traumatizing, especially if the life left behind holds secrets that must be faced or they will threaten whatever happiness might be possible. I am so excited that Ari will be one of those authors we will be interviewing for our series that spotlights San Diego Authors. I’ve started a new booklist on bookshop.org where you’ll find books written by writers who call San Diego home. More to come!
Like A Sister by Kellye Garrett was given to me by a fellow #bookstacker, Elizabeth Held, of What to Read If… after I won one of the drawings in her summer bingo game. I never win anything so this was fun for me and this book turned out to be a great one to grab one rainy afternoon near the end of the year. A tightly-packed thriller with exquisitely drawn characters, this book about one sister’s pursuit of her sister’s killer had me from the first page.
And, in case you are looking for books that offer “starting over” stories in one form or another, here are 100 of them, courtesy of Book Riot. The list seems a bit broad to me – in all of these books the protagonists or memoirists start over in ways “both big and small” and “came out the other side. Sometimes much better off, sometimes much worse for wear.” This list underscores how most life stories involve leaving something behind and starting something new which begs the question: are “start-over” stories really just plain stories?
A Poll That Has Nothing to do With Do-Overs
When it comes to an author's life-long oeuvre are you a completist? Do you consider yourself a completist, someone who reads an entire author’s oeuvre no matter how good or bad the books are? If so, why? If not, why not? I’ll let you know why I’m asking in an upcoming issue.
Reading and Writing Resources: New Additions
Just added to our Resources for Writers and Writer’s Groups: SubMakk. SubMakk is writer Rebecca Makkai’s (The Great Believers) newsletter for readers but mostly writers. You’ll find lots of fun reading material but writers will appreciate the periodic writer’s advice issues which contain frank, practical answers to common writer’s questions like this one about how to find a writer’s group:
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Ciao for now!
Gratefully,
Betsy
P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…Surrounded
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Loved this. My do over is raising my kids. I would love to raise them with the attention I pay my grandchildren. I was devoted to John Steinbeck and wrote him many many letters when I was 14 and was thrilled to get a response from his editor Elizabeth Otis kindly telling me he has received and enjoyed my letters but was very busy. ! lie or truth it didn't matter I was thrilled. My friend at the time was writing PAT BOONE and I felt quite superior. ha!
What would I do over? I'd want to relive the experience, not redo it. In 1976 I co-founded a women's theatre company with my best friend and playwriting collaborator. Every one of the women involved I've spoken with over the years speaks of those four years we had together as if they were magical. I believe they were. It was fun, thrilling, and fulfilling to create live theater for an audience starved for what we offered. We worked together in collective, the only collective I've been involved with that was fun, not a chore. We loved our work, we loved each other, and we loved our community. We were having so much fun, I think we believed (I know I did) that we could create that experience again. I came to Portland and founded the Portland Women's Theatre. My friends Ba and Kaye went to Austin and formed a women's theatre company there. Not the same in either case. What we created in Kansas City Missouri (Actors' Sorority) can't be replicated, because times and people have changed.