My Mother’s Last Words: Finish Your Writing

Jane Gilmartin

On the day I turned 50, I found myself sitting at my first ever novel writing workshop at Grub Street in Boston. I had secured the last remaining spot in the class only the afternoon before, a gift from my husband. I remember surveying the other eleven faces around that table and feeling suddenly certain that I didn’t belong there, no matter how much I wanted to be there.

As each class member introduced themselves and talked about what they were working on, that feeling of being an imposter grew more intense. They talked about story arcs and subplots and backstory – things I hadn’t yet thought to consider. They sounded so confident, so sure of themselves. They sounded like writers. I wanted to disappear in a puff of smoke before the introductions worked around to me.

I had quietly started a first novel some eight or nine months before. I did it without mentioning to anyone that I was attempting such a thing. I figured if no one knew I was trying, no one would need to know if I failed. Eventually, as a sort of comfort eased in, I began to tell people what I was doing. One day, I found myself reading early chapters aloud to my mother, who had always been my biggest influence. She had made me a reader and, without ever writing a word herself, she instilled in me a deep love for writing.

When it was my turn to speak, it was my mother I talked about first. I looked at that roomful of strangers, those real writers, and blurted out that my mother had died, unexpectedly, three weeks before. I told them I had been alone with her when she realized she was dying, and that her last words to me were “finish your novel.”

I signed up for that ten-week workshop two more times while I struggled through a difficult first draft of that story. I polished it up as best I could, sent it off to agents, even got a few requests for more pages, and then put it on a shelf when I was finally ready to admit that it wasn’t very good. But I finished that draft, and to me, that was hugely important.

That first attempt took up about a year and a half of my life, but I have never considered one moment of that time to be wasted. On the contrary, that struggle – and everything it taught me – made me, I think, a real writer. I finally felt like one, anyway. The fact that I was able to finish the thing felt like success. Ironically, though, it might have been the act of giving up on it that really made all the difference.

It wasn’t more than a few days later that I started writing THE MIRROR MAN, the manuscript which would eventually land me an agent, a publishing deal, and serious interest from Hollywood. (Fingers still crossed on that!)

It wasn’t an easy success, certainly. In fact, at one point I scrapped the whole thing and rewrote it from page one. But while I was working on it, there was a confidence and an understanding that I hadn’t had before, and I am convinced these things grew directly from that first abandoned attempt.

On the surface, THE MIRROR MAN is a speculative thriller about cloning and big pharma. It has twists and turns, subplot and backstory. But, when it was complete, I noticed themes that had become deeply personal to me: Things about taking a good, honest look at yourself, recognizing your mistakes and failures, and carving out, somehow, a second chance. And there is something, too, about keeping promises – not only to those people who are most important to you, but to yourself.

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Jane Gilmartin has worked as a news reporter and editor for several small -town weekly papers and enjoyed a brief but exciting stint as a rock music journalist. A bucket list review just before she turned 50 set her on the path to fiction writing. Also checked off that list: An accidental singing career, attending a Star Trek convention, and getting a hug from David Bowie. She lives in her hometown of Hingham, Massachusetts.

 

THE MIRROR MAN

Meet Jeremiah Adams. There are two of him.

The offer is too tempting: be part of a scientific breakthrough, step out of his life for a year, and be paid hugely for it. When ViGen Pharmaceuticals asks Jeremiah to be part of an illegal cloning experiment, he sees it as a break from an existence he feels disconnected from. No one will know he’s been replaced—not the son who ignores him, not his increasingly distant wife—since a revolutionary drug called Meld can transfer his consciousness and memories to his copy.

From a luxurious apartment, he watches the clone navigate his day-to-day life. But soon Jeremiah discovers that examining himself from an outsider’s perspective isn’t what he thought it would be, and he watches in horror as “his” life spirals out of control. ViGen needs the experiment to succeed—they won’t call it off, and are prepared to remove any obstacle. With his family in danger, Jeremiah needs to finally find the courage to face himself head-on.

 

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