The Sunshine State

Thoughts on manuscript failure, aging parents, and the old Suwanee

Last week, something marvelous happened. Dear friends of mine offered to take my daughter to Disneyland. In order to make this happen, I had to get her to Orlando. My mother, who is Florida-based, came and joined us last Thursday night on the eve of the handover of my daughter to our friends. I’d booked a hotel for us that had a sprawling pool, one of those pools that goes on and on for seeming miles, allowing a young person to feel like they’re a mermaid. It should have been a special time, a special evening, a reunion. But I had feelings in my heart.

My friend Ata Alonso of Ola Polo company on a young ex-racehorse along the Suwanee River in north Florida.

Before the trip, I’d printed out the nearly 20K words of a new novel I’ve been working on since April. If you’ve been with me for a while here, you’ll know that I’ve started this book over and over many times, trying out new perspectives, the voices of new characters, new storylines and POVs, ad nauseam. I really thought that I was on to something—I really thought that I was writing the “keeper” version of my book.

But when I read these pages, I was horrified. The manuscript lacked heart. I’d chosen as my main character someone who is an anti-buyer, skeptical and mad about the on-demand capitalist and consumerist society we live in. For years, I’ve been telling students and coaching clients alike that angry characters are really hard to read, and yet, I’d gone and wrote a supremely angry and judgmental character myself.

My heart plummeted. I was meant to turn these pages into my agent the first week of December. My husband (my only other reader) was waiting on them, too. But I couldn’t share these pages with them—I didn’t need anyone to tell me that they weren’t enjoyable to read.

I traveled to Florida on the verge of tears. I felt that I was set back many months now, falling behind on a deadline that is self-imposed. I’ve written five books—why the hell was it so hard to nail the beginning of my strory? Had I picked the wrong narrative? Did I need to burn this idea to the ground?

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Things were complicated when we arrived in Florida. I’ve never been to Orlando. I did not know that the Orange Lake Holiday Inn was approximately the size of 19 football fields; that it would take us ten minutes to walk to our hotel room; longer to make it from our hotel room to the serpentine pool below. My mother has decreased mobility as of late, and when she joined us, it was clear that she’d been downplaying her condition. She couldn’t walk at all. I spent much of the precious time I had with her trying to track down a wheelchair. I am ashamed to say that I wasn’t able to be present, even when I was next to her. I was in a dark mood because of my disappointing manuscript pages. I felt like a bad person because I was prioritizing my writing over time spent with my mother. I still do.

I made the hand-off of my child to my friends and left Orlando for Live Oak, a small and ultra rural town four hours north. My friends Ata and Olivia have a beautiful ranch there where they train and breed polo ponies. We had a lot planned for our together time. But it was freakishly cold. It rained. It rained a lot. Ata and Olivia have a lot on their plates with a home they’re building on their property from scratch. We were in a beautiful place together, lucky, healthy. But we were all stressed.

I’m back now, back in Connecticut—only for a few hours before heading to Lincoln, MA to spend the Thanksgiving holidays with the same dear friends who treated my daughter to memories in Orlando. Three days with 37 wet horses, goats, squawking chickens, six livestock guard dogs and countless other animals gifted me with the distance I needed from my manuscript. I don’t need to burn it down, I need to hearten it.

In the weeks ahead, I’m going to be working paragraph by paragraph to put more tenderness and hope into everything I’ve written. (I might show you how I’m doing this, I haven’t decided—I’m weird about sharing works-in-progress!) I thought my main character was angry, but it turns out she’s just vulnerable. And in these crazy-making, go-go times aren’t we all?

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Yesterday, I did a podcast interview for an outlet I was truly excited about: a big “get” as we say in media land. The host asked me what “success” was for me. Being able to write something new. Having the time and space and resources to be able to work on something new, is what I said. This feels truer than ever, and more exciting than ever, now that I’m back from Florida. The writer Chloe Benjamin had a beautiful IG post yesterday where she talked about the reasons she’s lingering in the writing of the follow-up to her mega bestseller “The Immortalists.” The promotion and marketing part of book making is her least favorite segment of the publishing experience. Accordingly, she wants to savor the slow and sometimes mystifying journey that is drafting, that is revision, that is writing the right words.

Let’s all go spend time with the people we love (or just spend some time alone with ourselves), and when we reconvene, let’s attack our projects with gratitude and pleasure. That’s my plan. Come with me for the ride?

Happy Thanksgiving,

Courtney