Life Disrupted: A Source Of Creation

A month ago we moved. We left a community where we’d been deeply rooted for the last thirty years. We left wide skies and open fields of the high shrub steppe for a forested island near Seattle.

The move brings us closer to family, to grandkids, to big city opportunities, but wrenches me from the kind of friends who’ve “known you since when” and from the small writing community that nurtured me through my first published novels. I’d forgotten how all consuming and disorienting a major move can be and I forgot how exhilarating a new adventure can be. I didn’t expect to be grieving. In a disrupted life, I’m trying to find my way back into writing. In my bleakest moments I wonder if I’ll ever write again. 

Then I remind myself that I’ve been in the wilderness before. We’ve all been there at one time or another. It’s the empty space after the death of a dream, the wreckage in the wake of a tragedy, the hollows of grief and even the unfamiliar paths of a new success or adventure. 

I’ve come to believe that the greatest part of life is wilderness, and we must learn to not only survive, but to create within that space. If I wait to feel settled, even for a reconstructed office, or a clean desk, I may never begin. Disruption is the default, those moments of tranquility, focus and blessed routine are the exception. I know that in my most difficult times, writing has saved me. It’s helped me uncover how I feel, given me vision, and a glimpse of hope. The opposite of despair isn’t happiness; it’s creation, which always requires hope.

If it’s the act of creation that helps us navigate and survive the wilderness, it’s also the act of creation that sends us there.

When we begin a new work, we voluntarily set out on a path that will lead us into unknown territory. In fairytales and myth, this journey is usually into the dark woods. In those mythic woods nothing is as it seems and anything can happen. We willingly putting ourselves at risk. Safety is not guaranteed. However, there are a few assurances on this journey: we’re sure to lose our way, we will be afraid and the journey will change us. Time spent in the wilderness always does. It always put us in the position of risk. Who would choose to put themselves in that position? Anyone wanting adventure, anyone driven to create. Without disruption there is no story.

I am trying to be at peace in a disrupted life, to understand as Bilbo reminds us in the Hobbit, adventures are not comfortable things. And neither is creating. And as for moving? Ask me in a year.

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Maureen McQuerry is the author of four novels. Her latest novel Between Before and After, (HarperCollins/Blink) is two generation, historical fiction set in 1918 New York during the Spanish flu epidemic and 1955 California. It explores family secrets and the bonds between siblings and  mothers and daughters. It was one of Barnes and Nobles  most anticipated historical fictions for 2019. A board book series, Big Ideas for Little Philosophers (Penguin Random House) will be in bookstores everywhere July 2020. You can find out more about Maureen and her books at www.maureenmcquerry.com

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About BETWEEN BEFORE AND AFTER

“The carnage began with the roses. She hacked at their ruffled blooms until they dropped into monstrous drifts of red on the parched yellow lawn … Only two things kept my mother grounded to us: my uncle Stephen and stories.”

Fourteen-year-old Molly worries about school, friends, and her parents’ failed marriage, but mostly about her mother’s growing depression. Molly knows her mother is nursing a carefully-kept secret. A writer with an obsession for other people’s life stories, Elaine Donnelly is the poster child of repressed emotions.

Molly spends her California summer alternately watching out for her little brother Angus and tip-toeing around her mother’s raw feelings. Molly needs her mother more than ever, but Elaine shuts herself off from real human connections and buries herself in the lives and deaths of the strangers she writes about. When Uncle Stephen is pressed into the limelight because of his miracle cure of a young man, Elaine can no longer hide behind other people’s stories. And as Molly digs into her mother’s past, she finds a secret hidden in her mother’s dresser that may be the key to unlocking a family mystery dating to 1918 New York—a secret that could destroy or save their future.

Told in dual narratives between 1918 New York City and 1955 San Jose, California, Between Before and After, by award-winning author Maureen McQuerry, explores the nature of family secrets, resiliency, and redemption. This is an historical coming-of-age Young Adult story about the complex bonds between mothers and daughters.

 

 

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing