My first book, My Reach: A Hudson River Memoir, appeared one year ago this month. In this year of publication, I have read to kayaking groups, and Hudson River enthusiasts, devoted library goers, and AARP members. I stumbled through an NPR interview and spoke to local papers. It’s been a lot of fun, being in the world, telling the story of writing my book.
What I never fail to mention in my talks is that when I set out to write the book, I knew nothing about kayaking and nothing about writing a book. People are in awe that I just plunked my boat in the water and stroked off toward the far shore. But no one says, wow, you sat down in a room by yourself and wrote every single word of a book? That, for me, is the bravest thing I’ve done. I gave up writing this book dozens of times—it was just too hard (the file I kept the manuscript in is labeled: Keep Trying). I say that it took me seven years to write this book, but really, it took me a lifetime. So when I hold my book and read from it, I think, miraculous, with all sincerity.
After I read, someone from the audience inevitably asks: what’s the next book? The next book? The question is a kind one—implied is, “I liked this, I could read more.” Or maybe I am flattering myself—maybe the audience is simply polite. But my response is, “really, I have to do this again?” One book seems plenty, like people who decide that one child is just right. But when you write a book, apparently people think you should write another. In fact, I think I should write another. The problem is, I’m not.
The second book is a treacherous thing. How many times has a writer put out their first book to good success, only to rush out the second book and have it be mediocre? Especially for those of us who publish later in life (I was 50 when my book came out—a fitting celebration of this landmark year), the first book often is a life-book, the one book. That, no doubt, is my situation. Still, a writer writes and I’ll keep writing. And now that I’ve written a book, another should be waiting in the wings.
I have a lot of friends who seem to be able to do this. As one book comes out, another is nearing completion. Then there are those miracle writers who churn out a book a year. I’d be much more likely to kayak around the globe.
Before I wrote My Reach, what I wrote were sentences that became paragraphs that morphed into pages, then something I called essays. I write essays, I said. I thought that alone an accomplishment. One day, I noticed that all of my essays centered on what I did, which was kayak on the Hudson River. They were filled with adventures and mis-adventures, Bald Eagles and snapping turtles, cement and ice factories. I strung these essays together, gave them shape. It was then that I noticed that the story of my parents lurked at every turn. I brought them into the foreground. I was lucky to find a real editor at Cornell University Press, a man with a pencil who wrote comments in the margins like “cliché!” or “you can do better,” or “we need to hear more about your mother.” I was grateful for it all.
What’s the next book? My editor emails me. Give me a call.
The question makes it sound easy. I thought, after doing it once, it would be not easy, but easier. I’d know the pitfalls, skirt some endless revisions. I’d head into a book with an outline, or at least a plan, rather than feel my way through the dark.
But these past few months, as I’ve sat down day after day to write the next book, I’ve encountered a whole other problem.
I’ve been thinking of writing a book--that’s the problem. When what I write are sentences, paragraphs, essays.
Somewhere in the silence of this summer, I’ve started to write essays again. But it took a lot of silence, sitting on an island in Canada (thanks to cousin Polly!) where I had no internet, no phone. I call it the silence of space, and it’s something I crave and something I know is rare. You can find it in small pockets around the world. It exists in writer’s colonies—I have been lucky to attend two, Ucross and Hedgebrook—where the silence of space greets you at your cabin door. It is both overwhelming and delicious.
The subjects of my summer essays do not neatly line up as they did with my Hudson River kayaking essays. There’s one essay about birding in Alaska, and another about being from State College, Pennsylvania in the wake of the Sandusky affair, and another about dating men after years of dating women, and one about the grandfather I did not know, and the photograph I have of him standing next to Hitler. There’s not a kayak, river, or snapping turtle to be found in these essays.
As I wrote, I loved searching for the next word; I enjoyed watching my ideas unfold. I surprised myself a few times, suffered a bit, and sweated at my desk through the hot summer months. It is possible, but unlikely, that one of these essays will extend and become a book. But after a year of trying to write a book, I now realize that isn’t what matters.
Despite all that I learned while writing a book, I feel like I’m heading out into the dark, holding onto a faith that my literary excursions will take me some place beautiful. It’s hard, holding onto this faith, whether it’s your first essay or your first book. Or your second book. And my guess is, the third book too and on down the line (maybe I’ll get there!). But what matters is sitting down every day and writing those sentences, searching for the next word, and watching my ideas unfold.