A while back I was fortunate enough to be contacted by Jennie Nash and asked to take part in a really great Mother’s Day promotion she was putting together for her newly released novel The Threadbare Heart.  I wasn’t able to commit to reviewing the book (and I knew it was going to get some great coverage elsewhere — which it did) but Jennie is such a genuinely nice person that I wanted to be sure to pass some of her thoughts on it to my readers.  Please join me in welcoming Jennie.

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My sixth book is being published today [OR was just published] and I’m already thinking about what I will write next. I’m already moving on. It’s not that I don’t love The Threadbare Heart. I do: I think it’s the best novel I’ve ever written (the love stories! The tragedies! The mother-daughter jealousies!) and it’s a thrill to hear the feedback from readers and reviewers, and to be out in the world talking about a finished book as opposed to being alone in my office, wondering if my story will ever see the light of day. It’s just that once a book hits the shelves, it’s not really mine anymore. It belongs to the readers who read it. They are the ones who get to decide what the story is about, and how it moves them, and whether or not they will still be thinking about it the day after they turn the last page, or a week after, or a year. They are the ones who really bring it to life. It reminds me of the way it must feel to work for a long time on a painting, only to sell it to a patron. The painting lived in the artists’ imagination and in their studio for many months, but it will live forever on somewhere else’s wall.

The process would be unbearably sad if it weren’t for the fact that the artist – or the writer – can always turn to what’s next. It’s the act of creation that is so energizing, and so joyous. It’s the sense of possibility that engages me. What will be the next story I tell? Who will be at the center? What will be its’ shape? Right now, my mind is like flypaper, and strange things are getting caught – the sound of a violinist in a subway station, a girl who doesn’t get into college, a question about keeping secrets. These images, ideas and people will attract other things, and for awhile, it will be a chaotic mess. I will no doubt spent a lot of time alone in my office trying to make sense of it, and trying to impose some kind of order on it, and wondering if my story will ever see the light of day.

I can’t wait to get started.

If you, too, are at the start of a new writing project, and instead of feeling joy, you are feeling overwhelmed or full of doubt, take my word for it, and believe that if you just persevere, order will come from the chaos. Even if you don’t believe it, just pretend that you do and it will amount to the same thing. As one of the characters in The Threadbare Heart says, “Creativity is not a linear process.”

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Thank you for visiting Jennie.  Good luck and best wishes on much success for The Threadbare Heart.