November 2006: Writing/Not Writing (cont.)

My days are busy, over busy. I’ve had galleys coming back and revisions to do, none of them deep enough to feel like real writing. I’ve had lectures to deliver, planes to climb onto, strange hotel rooms to sleep in. Letters from readers to answer and e-mails, endless e-mails. I’m grateful for the capacity to send and receive e-mails but sometimes feel consumed by the barrage of voices pulling at me each day. I’ve had students to teach and Advisory Committee work to do for Vermont College. And I do all this while in free fall, which is the mode I always go into when I’m not writing.

Three different projects rattle in my brain. I bounce back and forth between them at a rapid rate. Two of them are sequels, something I have never even considered doing before.

One would be a sequel to Runt. I have been researching wolves again, working my way back inside the forest and the pack. I even know the title for that sequel. It would be Singer, of course. And I have scraps and bits of the story. I know the piece I always have to know before I can begin, exactly where Singer will be when the story ends. What I haven’t yet found is the voice, the rush of energy that will carry me past the first difficult pages.

The other sequel, if I write it, would be to On My Honor. For twenty years young readers, dissatisfied with the book’s open ending, have begged for a sequel. They want to wake up with Joel the next morning. They want to attend Tony’s funeral. They want to see what will happen to Joel when he goes back to school without his friend.