Peaceful Exhilaration
Done! I started this book as a pantser, not a plotter. Scenes steadily unfolded, but the outline didn’t come until I was pretty far down the road. While I love the original cast of characters, it’s the ones who seemed to magically appear when they were needed who are among my favorites. Some days, writing came more easily than others, but I always looked forward to spending my days in Scotland’s breathtaking countryside and Napa Valley’s majestic vineyards as Gillian, Georgina, Freya and Lizzie worked out their demons and pursued their passions.
Have you ever worked on anything and experienced the quietly delightful realization that you’d come to the end? That’s how I felt when I wrote the last sentence of The Lights of Kirrie. Calm and elated at the same time. In Japanese, they call it shizuka na kōyō: peaceful exhilaration. Of course the revisions were seemingly endless, but still, there was that one breathy moment when I knew I was finished. And when I say “I,” what I really mean is “we,” because “I” couldn’t have done it without the encouragement of my village, starting with my biggest fans, my husband and children; my indispensable writers’ group, The Bay Area Writers Table; some extremely helpful and motivational books and podcasts about writing fiction; and of course, a room of my own, previously known as the bike shed.
If you haven’t read Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott, I highly recommend downloading the audiobook, read by the melodic writer herself. (Spoiler alert: it isn’t just for writers.) Listening to it felt like a meditation. A dear friend recommended it when I was feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the goal I’d set for myself: creating two compelling worlds, in two time periods, with a cast of characters I needed to make readers burn for so they’d keep turning the pages. I heard Ms. Lamott’s voice in my head telling me, “…you get this scared feeling inside you—of how hard it is and how far there is to go—but still you’re in, and you’re afloat, and you’re moving.” And so I kept moving, until one day I breathed a heartfelt sigh of peaceful exhilaration.