I've asked Elizabeth Benedict to weigh in on the series I'm occasionally running called THE BIG LIE.
I've known Elizabeth on and off since 9th grade when we first met and became great friends. We worked on the poetry journal and the yearbook together, read incessantly and talked books all the time, lived six blocks apart, and spent a lot of time on the phone.
After high school we lost touch until four years ago when we found ourselves on a panel about "sex in literature" at the Virginia Festival of the Book. What a surprise to find out we'd both become novelists who - in very different ways - look at many of the same issues in our fiction. I'm thrilled and proud to post this amazing essay Elizabeth generously wrote for this blog.
Elizabeth Benedict's five critically acclaimed novels have established her reputation as a writer who "specializes in the subterranean currents of modern relationships, the secret motivations and betrayals that underlie everyday interactions." Hallie Ephron in the BOSTON GLOBE called her most recent novel, THE PRACTICE OF DECEIT "a wickedly funny literary suspense novel." NEWSDAY's reviewer said Benedict "writes the hard, horrifying truth about human nature, and it is addictively entertaining." Her novel ALMOST made many "Best Books of the Year" lists in 2001. She is also the author of a classic book, THE JOY OF WRITING SEX: A GUIDE FOR FICTION WRITERS, which is used widely in writing programs. - MJR
Forget The Big Lie, Consider The Big Fantasy
Writing and publishing books are professions fueled on dreams – and hard work, high risks, and legal gambling. Who's going to win the third race at Belmont tomorrow? Whose book is going to be this year's HOURS, this year's EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED, this year's DA VINCI CODE? Please, please make it mine. The hard truth is that the writing trade is also a lot like marriage and love: you take big risks, hoping for big rewards. You say to yourself: my parents, my cousin, and my best friend got divorced, but not me! You go into it with hope, love, and high expectations--a house full of fantasies. You can finish the thought yourself: marriage – and divorce -- are as complicated as life itself. When divorce comes, couples almost always get to relive the horrors of their marriage, plus attorneys' fees. When marriages work, it's not because of a DeBeers diamond, a million dollar wedding, or a few good weeks. It's because ... well, THIS is a conversation for another time, maybe another lifetime.
But the more I think about it, the more the highs, lows, and maybes of marriage remind me of a lifetime of writing books (my first novel came out in 1985; my most recent, last week.) And if there's one good thing about being as old as I sometimes admit I am -- admit privately, sotte voce -- it's that I seem to have acquired enough experience to have "the long view." Enough experience to have had 31 Flavors of Success and Failure, and skin that grows thicker by the week, despite my shelf of anti-aging serums and anti-wrinkle moisturizers.
To get back to that Big Fantasy that makes our pulses quicken: When I find myself slipping into the clutches of it, I remember the wise, cautionary words of Andrea Eagan, a dear friend -- to me and many writers -- who died at 51, in 1993. She was a wonderful journalist and a founder of the National Writers Union in the 1980s. I remember saying dreamily to her and her actor husband Richard, "When my ship comes in..." They interrupted me fast: "Forget about the ship. It will be a series of small dinghies that'll come your way."
Twenty years later, I can report that we were all correct. In publishing seven books, I've watched a dinghy or two or three come ashore. In other years, about other books, agents and publishers have told me that the ship would be here soon. Now I see it's not nearly so simple.
My fourth novel, ALMOST, got great early reviews and was the lead review in the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW -- my ship, at long last! -- on Sunday, September 9, 2001. By 10am the morning of September 11th -- well, you know the rest... But here's the part you may not know: Because of its subject, ALMOST had an amazing afterlife. It became a book that people turned to after the horrors of 9/11, because it was about a single sudden death. It was the first novel NPR's Maureen Corrigan read after 9/11, and she raved about it on "Fresh Air" a week later. In paperback a year later, it was a national bestseller. Was it a ship or a series of small boats? I'm still not sure.
The questions I often ask myself -- the questions I now have the years and authority to answer for you -- are these: With all this uncertainty, all these high stakes horse races, how do we keep going? How do we pick ourselves up from crummy reviews, no reviews, no boats of any kind bobbing in the water, an agent or an editor who behaves as though she's trying to break up with us?
The answers are not easy or comforting, but maybe there's something in them. If you're meant to write, you'll keep writing. It's your job, not your vacation. It's your marriage, not your honeymoon. Stop gazing out the window at the water. Ask for help. Rage at the universe. Rewrite till your fingers nearly fall off. Remember what Henry James said long before laptops, Spell Check, and the movie deals he didn't lived to see: "We work in the dark. We do what we can – we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."
For more dark wisdom about marriage and divorce, take a look at THE PRACTICE OF DECEIT, just out in paperback. It's set in the affluent suburb of Scarsdale, and it's about a nice guy shrink who marries a ruthless divorce lawyer. Sparks fly. Ira Levin, the author of ROSEMARY'S BABY, calls it "A terrific non-stop read." I'll call his praise "a ship coming in."
Please visit: www.elizabethbenedict.com.
Great post, Elizabeth! I loved Practice of Deceit - one of my favorite books in 2005.
Posted by: Lauren Baratz-Logsted | May 26, 2006 at 06:26 AM