Some parts are easy and fun to write. Others come only with difficulty. They have to push themselves out of me against strong resistance. They are scenes, I tell myself, that I can’t write. The truth of course is that I can, but they’re uncomfortable and I resist them because they’re painful and awkward. And personal. What’s more personal than death and procreation, the beginning and the end of life? The alpha, full of hope, optimism, and expectation, has nothing but future. The omega wipes out hope, replacing it with melancholy and regret. It’s always final, and there’s no antidote for it but grief.
I wrote a memoir about the death—and resurrection in my memory—of my father. I’d hoped it would have a cauterizing effect on my relationship with him, and it did, but at a price; it took much too long to write, and it drew attention to truths that some would have preferred to leave buried. My response was that if one isn’t going to deal with the hard parts, why write at all? Michael Chabon said correctly that when you’re writing something that makes you uncomfortable keep at it because you’re on to something important.
Finding the right balance with which to convey that two characters slept together is equally difficult. Twice my readers have told me, “This character must die,” and one said recently: “Did those two sleep together? Did I miss that?” I’m rewriting those scenes—more boldly.
