Did You Write The Same Novel Twice?

It’s been said that writers have one story to tell.  I don’t know that I agree, but I do know there may be underlying, compelling themes that crop up in story after story, and even characters seem to demand more life.  They live in our heads, after all. They have more to tell us. Just read Elizabeth Strout’s Anything Is Possible to know what I mean. More a book of connected stories than a novel, it gives life to characters from Amgash, Illinois, the hometown of Lucy Barton, from Strout’s earlier novel.  Lucy herself makes an appearance.

The very act of writing, especially novels, takes time. For reasons that are as much about whimsy and timing and luck (not to mention a novel’s marketing niche) as they are about a writer’s skills, finding the right publisher often takes time as well. In the years that would elapse between submitting Just Like February and seeing it published, I would write another novel. As differently as I envisioned the stories they told, turns out they would have more in common than I may have realized.  

Just Like February, recently published, falls within classic coming-of-age parameters. The central question at the heart of the novel is how did we get from the sex/drugs/rock ‘n’ roll ’60s to the sex-as-death ’80s?  What the novel aims to achieve, through the voice of a young narrator recalling her relationship with a very special gay uncle, is a fresh perspective on innocence lost during an era underscored by the AIDS crisis.

Dancing into the Sun, a story of friendship, loss, the changing nature of family and what we call home, begins in the ‘80s. The central question here is how do you go home again if what you thought of as home no longer exists? The narrative arc is more complex than the earlier novel as it takes Daphne, the central character, from heartbreak to single motherhood to reconciliation with her own mother, who struggles with the distance Daphne has placed between them. With mythological undertones running through it, this novel is framed around the four cardinal directions that, in Native American lore, become literal and figurative markers to achieving spiritual wholeness and finding true home.  

The unconscious creative process takes us to both familiar and surprising places.  A very strong-minded mother/grandmother finds her place in both novels. Rachel, the young narrator of Just Like February, has a counterpart in Dancing into the Sun with close ties to a gay couple that figures prominently in her upbringing.  That the two young women evolve very differently does little to offset the impact of losing someone they love to AIDS.

What was I thinking? I’m tempted to ask myself in retrospect, and the only reasonable answer is that writing bears a lot in common with musical improvisation with its variations on a theme. With loss of innocence as a starting point, thematically speaking, Just Like February evolved into a story of a family’s unraveling and, by extension, a story of family dispersal.  

Enter Dancing into the Sun, which goes further in exploring the implications of family dispersal. Very few of my relatives live within easy distance from each other. My own daughter lives across the country.  Friends outnumber family at holiday gatherings. Whether or not this is the new normal, it’s something that profoundly affects me as a writer of fiction and essays. Consciously, or more likely unconsciously, the complexity of family ties and how they often loosen from generation to generation became a thematic thread connecting my two novels.

But theme, important as it is to what drives us as writers, is backdrop to the narrative drive of the stories we write. It’s okay to have a character (or two) who demands more life in another story (or two).  It’s redundant, on the other hand, to have them play the same part in stories intended as completely divergent, unless it’s a deliberate sequel or prequel. Reading Ursula Hegi’s Floating in My Mother’s Palm after reading Stones from the River was something of an epiphany: same central characters, two different eras.

So what do I do now—hit with the realization that Just Like February is a tighter novel and tells part of the Dancing into the Sun story more concisely?  Do I ditch the second novel? Or do I see the challenge for what it is—namely, go back to the drawing board, ruthlessly discard sections where the crossover is too close, and recast characters who bear a little too much resemblance to the ones in the earlier novel?

I couldn’t be the writer I am without knowing when to let go of what simply didn’t work.  At the same time, what make me the writer I am is the recognition that time away from a manuscript brings fresh insights.  In the way that characters live inside our heads and ask for more life, Dancing into the Sun beckons me with the bigger story it aims to tell. And in the same spirit that revision at any stage is a re-envisioning, I will go back to it, fired up, approach it as something new.  For one thing, the point of view is wholly different and I see an opportunity in beginning in an era (the ‘80s) where the first novel ended. At best, it will become a thematic sister to my earlier novel, different enough in its narrative arc, and I’ll find aspects begging to be fleshed out.  At worst, I’ll view it as too flawed to see the light of day—which of course doesn’t negate where bits and pieces of it worth salvaging will find their way into the next novel calling out to me.

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Deborah Batterman is the author of Just Like February (a novel), Shoes Hair Nails (short stories), and Because my name is mother (essays). She is a Pushcart nominee, and her award-winning stories and essays have appeared in anthologies as well as print and online literary journals. A native New Yorker, she has worked over the years as a writer, editor, and teaching artist. Her blog is an exploration of all the small things, and the big ones, that impact our day-to-day lives.

Website/blog: www.deborahbatterman.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deborah.batterman/

Twitter:   @DEBatterman

 

About JUST LIKE FEBRUARY

To Rachel, there’s no one in the world like her uncle Jake. Handsome and mysterious, he fills her with stories, sends postcards and gifts from exotic places. And he’s so much more fun to be with than her parents, who are always fighting. When she learns he’s gay, she keeps it under wraps. And when he gets sick, she doesn’t even tell her best friends. Until she realizes that secrecy does more harm than good.

Framed by the passions of the ’60s and the AIDS crisis of the ’80s, Just Like February begins with the wedding of Rachel’s parents when she’s five and ends with her sexual awakening as Jake is dying. As this poignant coming-of-age story unfolds, Rachel is forced to reckon with a home broken by the stormy love between her mother (a social worker) and her father (a Vietnam veteran) and a heart broken by the realities of homophobia and AIDS.

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