NaNoWriMo 2013

I came this close to going over to the Dark Side. Outlining a novel before writing it.

You know. The way normal people do it.

The idea came in March, courtesy of a friend. Brilliant. Poignant. Powerful. Dark. The kind one simply can't not just not say no to, but stop thinking about.

Last-minute change of plans, yadda yadda--that story won't get written this year. Which meant I was high and dry on Oct. 31.

Novelists are never without novel ideas (fortunately or otherwise, depending on how powerful those ideas are). I went through my Ideas folder: Oh, this one. No, this one. Or maybe this short story can be expanded. Or that one.

But nothing felt right. Too constrained. Too vague. Too--too nah.

I was in love with that other project. My little scribbler heart was cracking.

Over a glass of wine out on the porch, surveying the disaster the backyard's become over the last two weeks--cement mixers, mounds of sand and gravel, planks and posts of nail-studded wood, plastic sheeting, iron grilles and rods, chunks of old cinderblocks--I had an epiphany. Well, okay, not an epiphany. I remembered something.

A scene.

It's late at night in Curaçao. A woman sits alone in her house, deep in the maw of dejection. Grieving. Not sure over what, but I do know she feels she's lost everything. It's raining in that violent way only the Caribbean understands. Her doorbell rings. She considers not answering; it's late, she's alone. But there's a desperation in the ringing that grates at the little peace she's got left.

There's a man at the door. Someone she knows, or knew, twenty years ago. A brief acquaintance, momentous, but only to her. It changed her, and she's never been able to decide if that was a good thing. But here he is. He's got his three-year-old daughter with him, and he needs her help.

Her life is going to change. Again. Because she hasn't lost everything, not before she opens that door.

Sometimes rock-bottom loss is the only way to let the light back in.