Torn Between Two Lovers: A Tragicomic Tale of Second-Novel Rivalry 💔

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My first love, a thirteen-year affair, caused a lot of emotion over its long life—excitement, rage, fear, euphoria, satisfaction, frustration. It was both thrilling and exasperating and, truth be told, there were a few breakups, one I thought would be irrevocable. Friends were concerned we wouldn’t make it, calling it my phantom novel. But we went the distance and finally celebrated going public nine months ago. Since then it’s been a party, all champagne and celebration. A victory lap full of hard work, yes, but mostly pure joy.

One of the names I call the object of my affection is The Fourteenth of September. When I’m in a rush, I use its pet name, “A Woman’s Story of Vietnam,” sometimes just a short but sweet “Set in ’69.” We’ve had our moments. Never will a relationship be so volatile, meaningful, or memorable, and it will always be with me.

But I’m ready, as they say, to move on. It’s me, not it. No fault, harm, or foul. It’s just time.

I confess I’ve been flirting for about a year with a tall, dark, and handsome story with a foreign accent—about expats in San Miguel de Allende searching for their last dream. I admit I love rolling my tongue around its working title, “La Querencia,” and intriguing the curious with its definition: “The place in the ring where the bull feels safe.” The intrigue. I want to dance! In March, we slipped away together for a delicious month at the Ragdale Artist’s Retreat where we fantasized about our future in a ninety-page plot plan. It’s fresh, it’s sexy. It could work. But we have to commit.

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And yet, The Fourteenth of September won’t let me go. And part of me—and I confess this is a surprise—doesn’t want it to. It’s done well for a debut novel by an unknown, already in a second printing, in fact. But it’s so needy. So many months since launch and it still takes up 75 percent of my time. My juicy next novel beckons, and if I pause for even a moment to look over my shoulder and give it an encouraging wink, promising I’ll come soon, sales of the first just stop. It’s fond of these foot-stomping tantrums for attention. I will not be ignored, Rita!

I admit, sometimes I rather like the rivalry, if I can say that out loud—as I type this and have just moved the stacks of San Miguel research out of view. Each week I have opportunities to talk about the attractions of Lover #1, now fully wrestled to the ground and lovely. We’ve been through so much. I enjoy telling the tale: how my personal experiences became integrated into the story of an important historical time, the characters I both offed and paired off, the “soundtrack” I peppered throughout the action, the journey I renamed from “coming of age” to “coming of conscience.” It may be rough around a few edges, but it was my first love, a dream come true, and I relish sharing it. It still has a long runway, with the 50th anniversary of so many of the events it recounts upon us. And I owe it. I’m a different writer than before we met: better, wiser. Without it, what would I be? I don’t think I can give it up yet.

It’s just not a good time, I keep telling Lover #2, but realistically how long can I ask it to wait? The thought of it is so wonderful when I’m dreaming of how the plot will spin, but exhausting when I buckle down into the daylight of bringing it to life. I remember how much #1 took out of me, and my knees start to wobble. I sweat. Give me at least half your time, #2 demands, or I’m outta here. And, in fact, the details of some of the squishy parts of the plot plan have come to seem insurmountable. We’re no longer dancing. I already miss our early days: the spark, the promise. The certainty that this affair would be so much better, so much smoother, so much more. . . efficient.

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I’m at a crossroads. My publicist sends intoxicating Friday afternoon emails about major media that have requested review copies of #1, potential placements that are targeted for as long away as December, as far into the future as next spring. How long can I sustain this affair, I wonder? At the same time, book club members and other readers clamor for news of an arrival date for #2, when I’m not even sure how serious we are. My hairdresser tears up when I tell her about the bullring. Can I balance both? Must I walk away from one of them, shutting the door, drawing the line, refusing to answer the plot dreams that visit nightly about #2, or coldly let those unsold copies of #1 sit spurned in storage.

I need couples therapy. To sit them both down and duke it out. Who gets visitation on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and who gets the long, productive weekend mornings? The need for discipline and organization blasts at me through a subconscious voice of authority as I lie on the couch. “I know, I know,” I answer, as it regales me with stories of the unwavering work habits of Ernest Hemingway and Edith Wharton. 

I am weak. I am fickle.  I simply cannot live without them both, for now. A remedy will present itself, a favorite will emerge, I’m certain.

Well, isn’t it pretty to think so?

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A Tale Of Two Writer's Conferences

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I just returned from two back-to-back conferences and am reeling a bit from what I’ve seen as I begin to peddle my novel after quietly writing it for the past 12 years.

Association of Writers and Writing Programs—I Am Not Throwing Away My Shot

I’ve been to the formidable AWP Conference several times in the past, but always hung to the sides, picking up what craft or marketing information I could, but not feeling quite “legitimate” without a finished manuscript. I’d found my first AWP pretty frosty. Twice, someone I’d sat next to at a lecture responded to my “hello” with a quick look at my name tag and, apparently seeing nothing useful, turned full-body to the evidently more credentialed person on their other side. I’d been taken aback at such a PR faux pas. How do they know I won’t be the next Donna Tartt? So, this is the world we’re in, I thought, as I was repeatedly mowed down again and again until I figured out a system—leave the current session before the Q&A and you’d have a prayer at being able to get into the next, even though you’d probably still end up sitting on the floor.

It was at bit warmer this time. I knew a few people: the poet Parneshia Jones, who I’d met at Ragdale and author Paul Lisicky, who’d led a workshop I’d taken at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute a few years back.  I felt like a celebrity at Four Way Books when they recognized my name as the host of a salon this fall for Christina Pugh to introduce her new book, Perception. When I somehow qualified for a free copy of Elizabeth Strout’s new book I thought I was in like Flynn.

Still, there were 550 events. And, 12,000 writers vying for attention, queuing up like mad for every agent/publisher, asking multi-part “questions” of speakers hoping they’d register as so brilliant that surely they’d be begged for their manuscripts.  It was an ambitious and aggressive space, and everyone seemed to take that for granted.   The attendees were fashion funky, pretty evenly gender split, and primarily in, or on the cusp of either end of their third decade. Many were lost the first day, but more sure footed by the second as they sprinted around the massive Washington DC Convention Center in the ten minutes between crowded sessions, hoping to score a quick granola bar in one of the long concession lines. A choice for sustenance did inevitably mean you’d end up sitting on the floor.

Speakers were universally provocative and political—the daunting reality of the Trump-drenched atmosphere. We all wanted to throw our arms around Jennifer Egan who confessed she’d been right at the end of the final draft of her current novel on Inauguration Day, then stymied with depression. I mean, we actually all wanted to BE her, with her Pulitzer-winning Goon Squad talent, but would settle for offering comfort. Maybe she’d be grateful and recommend our manuscript?

The pace was insane and it was easy to feel out of it. So many events were happening that sounded off book—even a massive protest march, they said. You apparently had to be in the “know” to be aware of all that was going on. Just before a panel on Susan Sontag which featured incredible speakers but no overall “point,” I dipped into a “Over 50” session filled with festive grey hair, tipped with what Katherine Hepburn would have called “colors not found in nature”—purple, green and teal. They were earnest and eager, desperate for reassurance. I backed out early, sympathetic but unable--or unwilling--to self identify.

I left with a raging cold, a legacy of freezing conference rooms and a missed turn back to my hotel where I circled the block three times, teary from the wind, too cold to take off my gloves to work Google maps.

San Miguel Writer’s Conference—I’m Not Going to Give Up My Seat

After a quick strep test I was off to the Writer’s Conference in beautiful San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, which was warmer in every sense of the word. Here, age-wise I was firmly in the middle of the primarily female and very friendly and curious audience--a mix of readers and writers, most working on memoir. It moved slower. No one would think of sitting on the floor, but some were enjoying lolling about on blankets and pillows in the sun on the beautiful grounds of the Hotel Real de Minas. The wardrobe was Mexican fiesta with bright colors, beach hats and the essential San Miguel sandals so you wouldn’t break an ankle on the cobblestones. Food was important—and everywhere--and I may never eat guacamole and taco chips again (something I never thought I’d say). 

Mary Karr with Rita Dragonette

Mary Karr with Rita Dragonette

The speakers were there to be entertaining, with only occasional smart-ass remarks about Trump. Memoirist Mary Karr was side splitting. Her definition of narcissism was her mother staggering out of a bar in her stiletto’s looking up at the moon and saying “I have an earring like that.” Karr told a story about the Chanel-clad agent who’d encouraged her first memoir, The Liar’s Club, and I realized I’d seen the agent on an AWP panel earlier in the week. She’d shared a funny story about, as a cub, having to cut 100 pages out of a Simone De Beauvoir book. Her client roster is platinum but I wondered, fleetingly, if she’d give my debut novel a chance if I let her know it includes a running gag about Simone. Too much?

I held my coughing and nose blowing to after each of Billy Collins’ very funny and deceptively simple poems. By David Ebershoff’s lecture I was able to hear the fascinating 20-year journey from idea to book to movie of The Danish Girl on a single cough drop. The editor I pitched (despite what was on her web site) was not interested in fiction.  Had I considered my story as a memoir? she asked, bringing up a dilemma I’d settled long ago.

There was a curious insistence on etiquette. There were “rules” about noise (frequent shouts of “Sound” or “Volume”), timing ( rhythmic clapping would begin on the stroke of the start time and accelerate until the speaker began), and the avoidance of cardinal sins (standing or sitting in another person’s sight line, attempting to save a seat too long or, god forbid, cutting in line). Again, hard to self identify, particularly after the athletic techniques I’d just employed to get into AWP sessions.

In all, I was motivated but sick, and longed to settle in to a blanket in the back of the lecture hall, and listen with my eyes closed. I was pretty sure at the AWP I’d have been walked over, if not on. At San Miguel they would have covered me, but gone on to turn out the lights and lock the door.

What I learned

Despite challenging "cultures," there was information galore at both conferences. I learned I need a great idea (check—at least in my own mind), excellent craft (which is “assumed” by an MFA--is my Certificate from the University of Chicago close enough for a check?), to be a good literary citizen (those salons I hold, yeah!..check), and an ability to market (multiple checks).  How does it add up? Do my 30 years in marketing trump (sorry, there’s just no other word) the fact that I have the wrong degree?

Above all I wonder about velocity. The pace to succeed is thunderous, the need to capture attention instantaneous. Marketing and profile-wise I'm pretty certain I can pull this off. But I worry if there will be patience for the slow-build development of my novel’s teenage protagonist into her political dilemma. Should I change it now or wait until the inevitable rewrites? In other words, do I pull it off the market to remodel the kitchen, or trust that a buyer will either love it as is or see its potential? My inner perfectionist gnaws. Maybe I’ll decide by the time this cough is absolutely gone…

Getting my shot is going to be tough indeed. However, these conference experiences have convinced me more than ever that I do want my seat at the table. At this stage of the game, I’ll be happy to sit anywhere, even on the floor—as long as there are pillows.