My Substack posts about my YA novel
While I worked on, and reworked on, UNSTOPPABLE, I had thoughts. Some ideas materialized, kicked my foot, then vanished, never to be seen again. But one idea badgered me.
This is what I learned as I re-re-revised my novel.
When I revised TWO ROADS, RIVERS RISE, UNSTOPPABLE—and those are three title I’m certain the novel will not be called—I often had the feeling I was scaling a mountain. A very high mountain, the top of which I could not see. It was something I could only believe in. All I could see was the precipice before me that, I believed, led to one of an unknown number of peaks.
And so, I started climbing, not knowing where I was heading, besides up, uncertain of where to place my hands and feet as I moved up the vertical wall. Like an alpinist. Or a bug. Sometimes I would have little notice when I’d reached the peak. Other times, my climb was tediously systematic, and plodding, from one chapter to the next.
When I arrived at the first peak, the end of the first chapter, I looked down and around me. Everything I could see had changed. My view of what stood above me, and my view of mountain I’d just climbed, was unrecognizable. I had my same tools, but I had to adjust my next plan of attack, keeping everything in mind at the same time: where I’d been, where I was, and where I guessed I was going.
The climb to the next peak? Totally different from the first. Different terrain, different weather conditions, different strategies required. Up to the next peak I warily climbed …
You get the idea. But this next metaphor is a bit more abstruse. When I arrived at each peak, each chapter conclusion, not only was the novel completely different front to back, but so was the novel’s possibility. Each time I came to a summit in the manuscript, an entirely new way of viewing the novel presented itself. With each chapter, new opportunities by the dozens sprouted. And I realized that I could not have discovered these possibilities any other way than by slowly scaling the story, one plot plateau to the next.
Having this epiphany made me feel like the hours of revision had been worth it. I could not have created (or recreated) the novel in any other way. If you know Robert Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” you know how I felt.
I think about the last paragraph of the novel. M, the Lincolnesque, shy male high school senior who has been secretly in love with protagonist Kelsey Webb since elementary school, sends Kelsey an email four years after the events of the novel. He wants to get together with her. And he writes:
Anyways I’m booked to play in State College at Acoustic Brew, Saturday, September 17th 8:00 p.m. I’ll buy you a ticket if you’d like to see my show. I’d like you to hear my songs and tell me if they’re worthy of you. And how about a brewski after the show? Talk over old times? Did you hear Mr. Murray is getting ready to re-retire, having put in 4 years as Hannah superintendent? Where’d that go?
I wanted to put in that information about Mr. Murray, the high school principal who was fired by Dr. Rivers, returning to restore order at the Hannah Area School District. I felt it was necessary for the story. Something Shakespeare liked to do at the end of his comedies. But I saw no way to get it the story. Until I re-revised the ending. The opportunity bloomed in front of me like edelweiss, at the very last minute of my revising.
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It’s time for me to take a break. UNSTOPPABLE is in Auckland. I haven’t heard from Helen Thornton-Guzzy (apparently, she hasn’t burned it or hit “delete”) and I don’t expect to for another three weeks. Unlike most of the writers on Substack, I won’t concoct an endless stream of clickbait posts in an attempt to hold you prisoner until I have something further to say about this novel. Look for my next post after November 1st.
As always, thank you for reading!
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