Stealing Time By Davida G. Breier

Stealing Time

By Davida G. Breier

Shortly before my 45th birthday, I decided I was ready to confront one of my worst fears – fiction. I had toyed with the idea of writing a novel since I was in my 20s, but I would routinely dismiss the idea. 

You aren’t qualified to write a book. 

You don’t have the life experience. 

It will be terrible. 

Once I was in my 30s the excuses were more about time and logistics. I had a job. Then I had a family. Fear and excuses held me back for years. I talked myself out of even trying. 

Approaching my 45th birthday, I found the scales tipping. None of the reasons that had held me back for so long had changed, but I had. The fear of writing a bad book was now being met with the fear of never writing one at all. I had reached a point in my life where I was willing to give myself the grace to be bad at something. To try something with the expectation of failure, but doing it anyway. This new mindset gave me the freedom I needed. 

I thought about writing a book for almost a year before I committed to the idea. Once I did, I gave myself a deadline. It made it more real and allowed me to give the project weight against all of my competing responsibilities. 

I read voraciously and with a critical eye for what worked (and what didn’t) and what I enjoyed. What did I have to say that would be interesting or entertaining? That nagged at me all along. And then I read something about not being inadvertently deterred by your literary heroes, that writing isn’t a competition. Ultimately, I decided to write a book I would want to read. 

I had no idea how to go about writing a book. I had no process. I started making notes about each of the main characters. I described them in fragments. Sometimes the notes were no more than a single word and other times I created mock dialogue. It was like creating a pencil sketch before painting or a maquette before sculpting. The characters began to coalesce into existence and as they did so did the plot. After a while, the characters took over, and telling their stories became my motivation. 

I had very little time to spare, so I started by stealing time in my day. I would make notes in the car as I drove to work. I would write during my lunch break. I would imagine scenes as I showered or emptied litterboxes. I would listen as the characters started interacting in my head, usually in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. My insomnia became a stage. 

By September I was nowhere near the midpoint. I had only written about 14K words. The end of the year was an arbitrary deadline, but I needed it to keep going. I created a new spreadsheet that enabled me to track my daily writing goal of 500 words. Sometimes the words came easily. Sometimes they were 500 terrible words that were later deleted. And sometimes it was a 3000-word frenzy on a weekend. This helped me chip away at the book day by day. Those stolen hours eventually became stolen days.

I originally intended for my novel to be straightforward suspense, but as it developed it crossed into other genres, including coming of age. Just as my teenage characters were dealing with the challenges of youth, I was dealing with the challenges of middle age. I would argue that “coming of age” isn’t a singular moment of youth and we are all constantly coming of different ages. I didn’t have the answers any better than my characters did, but just as my main character knows she wants something more in life, I had a blind desire to write this book. In a way, the act of writing it became my own coming of age. 

I had a first draft by the spring of 2018. Life swerved a few times and I set the book aside. For two years, my characters continued to invade my thoughts. I made notes and stuffed them in a folder, waiting for time and energy to magically appear. The start of 2020 upended everything. There was no time left to steal for my characters. There was no time left for me. 

In January 2021, I landed in the ER. They couldn’t find anything wrong with me and said it was anxiety and stress. It was no wonder. I had been working 50-60 hour weeks, plus caregiving, for almost a year. I needed to find something to do for myself again. I decided to pick up the novel and as I did, fate intervened. I stumbled into a contract with one of my favorite publishers. 

My novel, Sinkhole, would eventually be published a few months after my 50th birthday. I stopped caring if the house was clean and let the yard overgrow. I was no longer stealing time to work on the book, I was giving it to myself joyfully. I realized that the time had always been mine and reclaiming it was as much part of the process as figuring out the plot. I’ll never reminisce about the laundry being done, but I will always remember how those first copies felt in my hand. 

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Davida G. Breier was born in Miami, FL. She’s spent the last two decades in various roles within the book industry and currently works for Johns Hopkins University Press. Publishers Weekly called her novel, Sinkhole (University of New Orleans Press) a “mesmerizing debut.” Davida lives in Maryland with her family, a pack of wee rescue dogs, a rescue tortoise, and two companion chickens.

SINKHOLE

“mesmerizing debut” ―Publishers Weekly

“…the electric denouement more than justifies the tension throughout.”―The New York Times

“…a sweet and sour and ultimately redemptive delight of a mystery, redolent of 80s Florida and adolescence in all its sinister glory. I devoured it.” ―Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners and Get in Trouble

“…a thought provoking, highly atmospheric, and immensely readable debut …” ―Jonathan Evison, New York Times Bestselling author of Small World

Humidity, lovebugs, and murder.

Lies from the past and a dangerous present collide when, after fifteen years in exile, Michelle Miller returns to her tiny hometown of Lorida, Florida. With her mother in the hospital, she’s forced to reckon with the broken relationships she left behind: with her family, with friends, and with herself.

As a teenager, Michelle felt isolated and invisible until she met Sissy, a dynamic and wealthy classmate. Their sudden, intense friendship was all-consuming. Punk rocker Morrison later joins their clique, and they become an inseparable trio. They were the perfect high school friends, bound by dysfunction, bad TV, and boredom―until one of them ends up dead.

Forced to confront the life she turned her back on fifteen years ago, she begins questioning what was truth and what were lies. Now at a distance, Michelle begins to see how dangerous Sissy truly was.

An ingenious debut from editor and publisher Davida Breier, Sinkhole is a mesmerizing, darkly comic coming-of-age novel immersed in 1980s central Florida. A disturbing and skillful exploration of home, friendship, selfhood, and grief set amidst golf courses, mobile homes, and alligators.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing