January 22, 2024, I will turn 50. Over the past 6 months, I’ve been having what I presume are the usual thoughts one has facing such a milestone — what are those things that aren’t quite resolved yet — what are those things I haven’t done yet that are important to do.
I know I want to write a novel. I attempted, badly, to write a science fiction novel shortly after graduating from Cal. Years later, on Tuesday night drinks, I’d talk to my friend Suzana about the next novel, ‘Leaving San Francisco’. It was going to be a block buster about Silicon Valley and all the booms and busts.
That never quite panned out either. I don’t even think I wrote a sentence — it was just fun to talk about writing the novel over martinis usually in the Valley Tavern.
Facing fifty, I started reading again, literature, getting back in touch with good words on a page. And I finally started to read Ursula Le Guin. People told me about her for years, but I just never got around to picking up one of her books (I’m on my seventh book now). Through her writing, I discovered something fundamental — I don’t want my protagonist to be a woman. Like Ursula — I want to explore some of the boundaries of feminism, gender identity, through the male protagonist lens.
Listening to Glennon Doyle’s podcast this week, a quote came up from Lizzy Gilbert, “Work on / write on what causes a revolution in your heart”. Just a few months ago — the story came to me, the real one, my first novel that isn’t something that I want to just try and write — it is something that I must write.
I grew up in a small town, Ocean City, NJ. When you tell people you grew up there, lots of people recognize it as their happy place, where they went for a week in the summer, the beach, the boardwalk. It is that kind of a place. But there is darkness too.
The women who grew up with me in that town know what I am talking about. This kind of strange town, such contrasts between the winters and summers playing itself out in these extreme joys and traumas.
I’ve thought about writing down some of these stories, and it just never quite came out right. The scars are healed enough, but the words just didn’t seem to flow — And even if I got words on paper, it just didn’t seem like a story I wanted to tell, or a story I wanted to read.
Trying to tell my story by letting people into my sacred place — that doesn’t feel like an act of power. I don’t want people’s pity or even empathy. And as I face 50, I definitely don’t want to spend my time returning to places that I left behind for good reason.
Every writer must have one of these moments when you first find your characters and the journey they are on. Mine is the story of the young local boys of Ocean City — I want to explore their experiences, their friendships, and how they engaged with me, my friends, our town — trying to understand their perspectives, and also to try and make some kind of sense out of their darkness.
I started writing a little bit over the past couple of weeks, sketching out scenes and characters. This week, I had my first breakthrough — I wrote out the rough plot, and it was so strange, so surreal, like once the first scene was right, the rest of the narrative fell into place. I could see the story in it’s rawist form, from start to finish. This is the furthest I’ve ever gotten in writing a novel.
Today, I drafted the first scene — main characters traveling from Upper Township to Ocean City on a Saturday night, the weekend after Memorial Day. They convince the older siblings to bring them along, as they can groom for girls at Simm’s and bring them back to the party house.
It was unexpected how easy the words flowed — how I was almost there with the boys, engaging with a world I understood so well, that I was in with them, but it was through their experiences. I could meet people I knew, go to familiar places, but somehow, there was this different lens that made the place seem so very different.
The writing isn’t beautiful, but the patterns are emerging, the characters are coming to life. I am finding joy in these boys, empathy for their lives, even as their darkness unfolds.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever finish this novel, let alone share it with many people, but it is important enough of a moment in my life to share — that somehow revisiting that part of my life and some of those people who may have hurt me, through the lens of their own lives, is something quite unexpected and interesting enough to at least continue for awhile longer.
