That nervous time before lift-off...

In four weeks my novel, Mistress of the Sun, will be officially published in Canada (U.S. publication will be in June). The time before a novel comes out are always hard. Will readers like it?

Believe me, it's never easy. Over a decade ago, when I was just starting out, and piling up the rejection letters, Jane Urquhart—a wonderful best-selling Canadian author—told me: "Get used to it." If it isn't rejections, it will be reviews.

But getting "used to it" entails lots of nail-biting. Which is why sincere and unexpected enthusiastic responses mean so much. I had one such yesterday, a note from Bernard Turle on my Mistress of the Sun FaceBook page.

An endorsement from Bernard is extra-special because he was the wonderful French translator of the Josephine B. Trilogy. I'm not French, yet I write historical novels about French history, so I'm always concerned about how a French reader is going to respond.

Here is what Bernard so kindly wrote:

"I love Mistress of the Sun and I hope I shall do the French translation for my favorite publisher in Paris ; I am so glad Sandra has chosen to work on women of silent power ; I heard from her long ago that she was working on La Lavalliere and I so much enjoyed translating the Josephine trilogy that I was very keen and of course I enjoyed every minute of the reading. La Lavalliere is less known than other royal mistresses and the novel is a welcome addition to the literature on her. Among many other qualities, I like the point of view from which one sees history : through her : not in the light, not in the shadow, just in between. I sympathize with that position, which is typically a translator's position."

I love his phrase, "women of silent power." Thank you, Bernard, mille fois.

An amazing writer at work...

This article in the New York Review of Books by Michael Dirda on Joyce Carol Oates is well worth reading. It has a great deal on Oates' work patterns. She is a dirvish:

Between the beginning of 2000 and the end of 2005 she published nineteen books. She has written over seven hundred short stories, more than Maupassant, Kipling, and Chekhov combined.

But what's astonishing is that she is a writer who polishes her work, who rewrites every page over and over. As well, she is a professor and occasional editor of a literary journal. She has a balanced, healthy life and a happy marriage.

I don't know how all this is done. My time can easily become consummed with minutia. Who checks her galleys? Who answers her mail, the telephone? Who pays her bills?

Her journal tells us that she writes from 8 till 1 every day, then again for two or three hours in the evening. And she revises and polishes and reworks page after page after page.

I found this passage from her diary particularly moving:

I love to wake up early and begin to read. While the house is absolutely silent—Ray still asleep, nothing in motion. And then, after he's awake, work at my desk. Until 1:30 or 2. Then have breakfast (apple & cottage cheese). Then return to my desk.... Anything, everything, charms me at such times. Working on The Possessed [for an essay] or my own novel; dreamily shuffling through my old notes for stories or for Bellefleur; writing letters, postcards; staring out the window (at the perpetually falling snow—and occasionally cardinals, and often sparrows, in the berry bushes; today it's snowing so thickly that the river is invisible); thinking about the University; about students, classes, colleagues, things I must do, books I must read; day-dreaming; doodling; rewriting a brief chapter in Evening & Morning; browsing through things that have found their way onto my desk, for some reason; thinking vaguely ahead, as the afternoon darkens, to dinner....
[from The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982, edited by Greg Johnson. Ecco, 509 pp., $29.95]

Such rich "doodling"! It feels rather like a life from another time, and I long for it.

That absorbed state

"I slipped into that absorbed state I have come to associate with the writing process, or rather, that part of writing that precedes actually putting any words on paper."

--Susanne Dunlap, from her essay "Men Seldom Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses" in For Keeps; Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance, edited by Victoria Zackheim.

This sentence by Susanne, a friend, startled me. I know that feeling well. Quakers talk of being "moved to speak." This sensation is similar, a welling up intense interest, a tumbling of voices and thoughts. It's like falling in love, a feeling of inevitability—a feeling of being blessed. 

This sensation of "possession" makes writing vital, addictive. It is also what makes its absence distressing. Writing Mistress of the Sun, I was "possessed" for almost eight years. Now that the novel is out in the world, I'm experiencing that same flat disinterest I felt after The Last Great Dance on Earth—the last of the Josephine B. novels—was launched. It helps to remember that I've been here before, that it takes time for the well to fill.