Wormhole AKA Wormhole
I lied.
The hit was one of the ideas to start the novel I’m working on, but not the only one.
Four years ago Evelyn Fazio, WestSide Books Editor and all around wonderful person (she did publish my first novel Open Wounds!), told me to write about my HIV/AIDS work. We’d just had lunch and I’d told her about my day job. “Write about it,” she said. Her suggestion stuck with me.
About a year later I wrote this line:
Did you ever wish you could be invisible, like The Invisible Man from that H.G. Wells book? He wrote that in 1897. Unfucking believable, my uncle Hatch would say. Both Wells and Hatch knew something about the need to disappear.
Then I wrote ten pages about a boy named IC whose parents were living with HIV. Then I found the hit tucked away in an electronic file. Maybe it found me. Something told me to put it in front of IC. It came first. I started at the end. Then I wrote two hundred pages – forward up to the opening scene, finished it, and kept going into act 3.
I wanted to write about HIV but not about someone who had HIV. HIV is much more a chronic illness today than it ever was and there’s a whole generation of long term survivors who are in their fifties and sixties who are dealing more with old age, albeit accelerated by their HIV, than HIV. They’re also dealing with AIDS Survivor Syndrome and loneliness and depression, and … It truly is a time when we can end the epidemic. Inhale exhale.
I’ve worked in the public health field of HIV/AIDS for over 25 years.
Write what you know. There’s a third element. I forgot about it. It’s unpleasant so I forgot about it even though it happened in reality before the hit did. It’s another expedition into the wormhole. I didn’t realize until now it was these three things that begged to be written about that came together into one story. I’ve kept them separated in my head where all the work it partitioned off. I’ll get to the third part because they all tie together under the write what you know label. Just not right now. I need to circle around just a little more.
Wormhole 42
Wormhole 42
I wrote ‘the end’ yesterday. A lot of writer’s talk about it, the feeling they have when they write ‘the end.’ I find a bit of sadness and a bit of anxiety and a bit of satisfaction as in. It’s not a first draft but it’s not a last. It’s a draft that says to me,
I wrote ‘the end’ yesterday. A lot of writer’s talk about it, the feeling they have when they write ‘the end.’ I find a bit of sadness and a bit of anxiety and a bit of satisfaction as in I can’t get no. It’s not a first draft but it’s not a last. It’s a draft that says to me, I need to be read and validated and edited now.
Overall it’s a pretty good feeling.
It weighs in at 301 pages and about 70,000 words in courier font because courier reminds me of a manual typewriter. It’s taken two and a half years to get here and a couple of wormholes and a few false starts – though I wrote the opening page about nine years ago. It’s funny how that works.
My first reader is my wife, Karen. Always.
She asks me, “Am I going to get upset?” I nod. Of course. She knew the answer before she asked. I could tell you about the plot but it doesn’t matter because it’s really about my friend who died when I was twelve. His name was Joe, same as me, and I still, 42 years later, think about him.
I’ve been working hard on this book, pushing, since June. Since June I wrote the last act, some 80 pages, and read through/edited three times – lunch-time when I could. Some late nights. Some weekends. I made time. I gave up some other things instead. I found a good rhythm – one that, as a novelist, I haven’t been able to find in a while. It feels really good to find it again.
Now I don’t know quite what to do with myself except wait and try not to ask Karen, “Did you start reading yet?” I asked her this morning. I have no impulse control about this. Really, I don’t – never have.
Lunievicz 