The things we carry, and lose

It was only paper but it made me feel stronger

Before we begin

What are the objects or actions you reach for in order to feel more secure? Do you try to impose order on chaos or do you resist the urge and just let things unfold as they will? What did you discover about yourself when you lost something you thought was vital to your work or to you personally? What did you discover about yourself when something you thought was lost forever found its way back to you? 

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The universe calls my bluff

Last week, near the end of my note to you about time travel, I wrote calmly, with as much stoicism as I could muster, about the loss of my backpack and all it contained. The universe called my bluff. 

Hubble telescope images (NASA)

At first, I was happily surprised  when I sat down Monday morning with a new printout of the third section of my novel in progress. I fell into the work easily. The notes I’d made in the margins of the copy that was lost with the backpack either came back to me or turned out to be less important than I realized. I reached the end of the read-through and then turned to the writing of what would follow. 

Casually, I reached for a file where I’d kept a trifold chart I’d made that mapped out the events of my novel for easy reference. It was so cool: the years ran down the left side. Across the top were columns for external events of importance followed by three separate columns for each of the most important characters. Little sticky notes with events hand-printed on them were plastered in the appropriate column by year. I could move them or change them as I needed. The entire thing was a kind of map, an at-a-glance look at the landscape of my novel which unfolds over nearly 18 years. I used it to orient myself when I needed to reground myself. I looked to it, along with three other “roadmap” documents to remind myself of what I was trying to do when I doubted myself  or reached the point at which I’d arrived on Monday – moving from one block of time to another. 

I looked first in one folder, then in a bag I’d used to tote various books around. Then it hit me: all of the papers had been in the backpack. I remembered grabbing them at the last minute and packing them because, with them, I would always know where I was and where I was headed in my writing.  

My stomach got that tight, sick feeling I get when a terrible truth is beginning to dawn and I can’t reverse it. 

I could live without or replace the iPad, the Kindle, the copy of An Unnecessary Woman. I could hope that the bit of cash in there would be put to good use. It turned out that I could even live without the margin notes on the copy of my novel’s pages that were in there – the section itself was easily reprinted. 

But there was no replacing the “roadmap” and the notes I’d made. I would have to start those from scratch. It was as if someone had come along and pulled my chair out from under me. I went into a kind of shock. I wrote a “message to the universe” on Instagram and shared it on FB – hoping against hope that someone might help me get the word out to a Nextdoor.com group near Woodbridge, CT, where I believe the backpack vanished. 

So far, the universe has offered much-appreciated empathy but no backpack or its contents. 

I am writing now without a net, stumbling in the wilderness without a map, and, as you can see, edging dangerously close to melodrama and drowning in cliches. I am forced to face, yet again, an embarrassing truth: I depend on physical objects that provide a sense of structure and continuity.

Confession: I sleep with a rag of blue blanket I’ve had since I was nine years old. It replaced the shreds of one I’d had as a baby. The satiny edges of my current blanket are long gone. It no longer even forms an identifiable rectangle – it’s just strands of fabric held together by other strands. It has followed me everywhere, through every relationship, every life change, every move. I have never lost it even though there have been times when I’ve put it away in a drawer where it waited for me to return. These days, I roll the mess into a wad and tuck it around me when I turn on my side and fall asleep. I also like structure. If I am headed somewhere new and unknown, I like to have a map. When there is neither structure nor map, I rush to create them. I do this for myself. I do it for others. Too many possibilities can immobilize me. 

Something interesting happened after I posted my  “call” on Instagram, however. Having put it out there, I could then scribble more freely in my journal. This led to some ideas for the next section of the book which themselves led to new sentences and the fragments of some scenes that were always lurking apparently but had been suppressed by the “structure” I’d created with my roadmap. My progress is slow, halting. I’m frustrated and my confidence has taken a hit but I am at least inching forward. I’m allowing myself to wonder if my structure was helping me or holding me back.

I don’t yet see the loss of these documents as the gift I’m sure the universe intends it to be. If the backpack and all its contents were to magically reappear, I would welcome them. But maybe now the words I wrote last week about moving on have taken on the ring of authenticity. 

“Part of me still harbors the hope that some of these things will, miraculously, be found and returned to me. Even if they do, though, I’ve already started moving on without them. This is how it is with losses, big and small. There is no going back.” - “Time Travel Can Catch Up With You”

What about you? Do you have a lost and/or found story to share?

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Lost and Found: Short Reads

The folks at LitHub seem to have an entire collection around the theme of what writers and readers lose and find. Here are a few links to stories that made me wince with recognition and led me to hope that what was lost may be found … eventually. 

• Sometimes you have to get lost to find what you really need to write. (LitHub) Canadian Novelist Hal Niedzviecki writes about how getting utterly lost led to the book he needed to write. 

• To The Stranger Who Returned My Notebook by Leigh N. Gallagher, “By March I was finally beginning to rediscover moments of joy amidst the grief; grief I’d written about at length in my now-missing notebook. On the icy sidewalk, I borrowed B’s phone to cancel my bank cards. There was no number I could call to cancel my journal.” - Leigh N. Gallagher

• Found in a Library Book - Oakland Public Library keeps an online archive of the items its librarians have discovered in the pages of books returned by patrons. Unanswered love notes, grocery lists, photographs, crochet hooks – what Sharon, the librarian behind the project calls, “tiny windows” into the lives of others. She was interviewed about it by Kelly Clarkson. 

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Spark Author News

Two of our the authors among us just launched new books. We’ll be learning more about these soon but check them out for yourself below. 

Andrew Merton’s fourth collection of poems, Killer Poems, launched in May. “Merton mixes a playful surrealism with the knack of capturing both the hilarious and the deadly, and pulls off the visual pscychologists’s trick of making the familiar strange and puzzling. All of this is delivered in that most serious of all modes, a graceful sense of humor.” - Rory Brennan, poet

Robyn Ryle’s new YA Novel, Fair Game launched this week. Led by Amanda Harkins, the Lanier girls basketball team plays the boys team for the good practice court which the boys have been getting despite their losing record and the girls’ winning record.  One game. Boys against girls. The losers agree to quit the team and give up their whole season. But has Amanda gone too far? The three girls leave it all on the court to settle the question—what does it really take to be equal?

"Robyn Ryle has created a gift of a novel that tells the story of three girls from different walks of life, all coming together to use their collective passion and power to raise each other up. Emotional and empowering, FAIR GAME is full of the kind of heart and humor that will have you cheering for the girls from the first page to the very last - I cannot recommend this book highly enough!" - Amber Smith, New York Times bestselling author of The Way I Used to Be

Coming this fall by Judy Reeves and available for pre-order now: When Your Heart Says Go by Judy Reeves, author of two books about writing and cofounder of San Diego Writers Ink. . This is the story of a woman who sets out at midlife on a solo journey to see as much of the world as she can, the only itinerary is the one she chooses each day. Shadowed by the war brewing in the Gulf and still grieving the loss of her husband, she makes her way through Europe and then to India. The story weaves her outer journey with the far more challenging inner journey as a sober, single, independent woman seeking her next chapter. 

Browse these and other authors on our Spark Author’s Page and on our special shelf at Bookshop.org. 

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That’s it for this week. Thank you for being here. Let me know how you are and what you are reading or what idea took hold of you this week and wouldn’t let you go.

Ciao for now.

Gratefully,

Betsy

P.S. And now, your moment of Zen…left behind

No matter how many times she tried, Lily could not climb up after the squirrel.

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