Almost Out of the Bag

by Julia Buckley

I’ve been working on a new mystery for months. And months. First it was just a little something I was trying out. I’d go back to it now and then, but I wasn’t very enthused. I brought it to my writing group, which is usually pretty critical, and I expected them to blast it out of the water.

Except they didn’t. They liked it, and they wanted more. Nothing feeds enthusiasm like a compliment. I went back to it and, through their eyes, realized that this wasn’t that bad a beginning. So I continued. I brought it back to the group the next month. Ten thousand words had turned to twenty thousand. They liked it even more. And suddenly, my pace increased. By the time summer vacation rolled around I had thirty thousand words and lots of ideas.

Today I wrote for hours; my sons would occasionally leave their own pursuits to come and stand behind me, saying not “When will it be finished, Mom?” but “When will you be off the computer?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered, waving them away. They went, grumbling. I wrote until I had reached the climax—now all that’s left to create is the denouement, and then the draft will be complete.

So hurrah! Right? Except as you all know, I have a big long journey ahead. I have to revise. I have to get a manuscript that I like and then send that to my agent, and SHE has to like it. Otherwise it sort of dies right there. She might like it but want more revisions. Or, in my dream scenario, she’ll say “This is great. Let’s send it out.” And then two giant publishers get into a huge bidding war over my book, which they are already envisioning as a movie.

Oh—sorry. Did I say all that out loud?

But here is the reality I understand: finishing a book is a beginning, not an ending. And a part of me will really miss that creative process that escalated the tension for both me and my characters, who are now my friends. I love them and I wish them well—preferably a long life in a series of books that actually see publication.

But as a mystery lover I know this best of all: what will make it is a mystery, and I’m about to take my manuscript into a world of shadows.