April 2010

Then I got to follow up by asking them all how it feels."…a bit strange," says Z. After all, there's no way round it: there is a competitive side to any award. And yet "the nature of the creative process is not competitive. When I'm writing every morning, I'm certainly not writing in opposition to anyone or anything! So it's a little funny to bring that energy into the process."

If she sounds a little shocked, that's probably because Verge is Z's first novel. To get recognition this early on in a writing career is very unusual — as Z is only too aware: "To be nominated for my first book feels like a real gift. I have no complaints!"

For anyone out there feeling just a little bit envious, it has to be said that Z has worked hard for her success. She began writing 10 years ago, and she wrote every single day. "For a few years, I wrote four hours a day, seven days a week.

"That doesn't work for me anymore!" (Phew!) "I have more of a life now! … I now do two hours in the morning, five days a week. I'm pretty disciplined, and I love the feeling of having a regular schedule. Plus it's a great way to write a novel! Slowly but surely, the thing gets done."

Seems that Z, like every writer, has found what works for her — and learned to trust it. The same is true for Jill: "You have to trust yourself an inordinate amount when you're not a plotter. And I'm not. I have some general idea where I'm headed, an image I work toward, but the rest is unknown."

Sounds pretty scary to me. But Jill reckons she's got good support:"I talk aloud to the dogs. Test the dialogue. The sentences. The rhythms. The old poet impulses of sound are impossible to break, and I wouldn't want to anyway. I love these days, in my ratty-assed chef's pants, hanging out with these people who strive and tumble."

Run that by me again, Jill. Dogs and torn pants — you say these work?

Yup. And blank pages don't worry her, either:"I used to write at a sliver of a desk, which was pressed against a wall, in the dining room/library/office portion of my apartment. With one goofball photo of my kid leaned against the neck of the monitor to break the monotony of a white wall, and a white page, I'd type for hours. (I only write by hand when I'm stuck, or dreaming.)"

Elana has a different process. But she has this in common with Z and Jill: discipline. "…I keep at it, in bits and pieces on the computer, in late night hours, in my journal when I travel or dream. The best way to write, I find, is to go away from daily life for three or four weeks if I can find them, or any time I can carve out. Then I am happy and challenged by solitude (happy to be challenged) and sometimes words come out that please me enough to share."

Elana, you see, has to have a good reason before she'll let us see her words: "As I get older, I suffer — not blocks, exactly — something closer to despair. The world is stuffed with words; why add to the debris? Yet I know that stories are what change hearts, inspire lives, comfort the isolated, and annoy the powerful."

That's one reason she writes. But there's something else that drives her. Something she didn't initially want to put into words. "Some processes seem private," she said.

Fair enough. But Elana's a writer, and she came up with the goods: "Mushrooms are the largest living organisms, some of their root systems spanning acres. Here and there, mushrooms appear overnight and turn to mush within a week. Botanists have slow-motion pictures and field reports of the underground tangles from which they sprout, but when we think of inky caps piercing leaf loam, it's as big a mystery as the fringed edge of the universe where (perhaps) stars are still being formed.

"At some point, everyone sits down to write something and most encounter many forms of difficulty (I know, because I teach college English and watch my students' struggles)."

"…I do what I can to nourish the underground life, mindful of how my roots twine for miles and decades with all the other women sitting down to write."

I love that last paragraph. It sums up, I think, what Bywater is all about: Women writing for other women.

Thank you, Elana! Thank you, Jill! And thank you, Z! We'll be keeping our fingers crossed on May 27!