What Have I Done?

On starting a new book when another is almost done

A behind the scenes post on a personal revelation of being stalked, reframing the situation in the context of creative writing, and expanded insights on the phenomenon of writers block.

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Before I tell you about this new book, let me tell you a story about a stalker who tried to break into my cabin last month.

As you may or may not know, I’m on a three-year retreat in a remote fishing village. I’ve taken up the job of land manager on several acres with two houses (one on the upper deck of the land), a barn and several outbuildings, and my own cabin at the lower deck of the property. I know a few people in this town, like three, and that’s fine. I’m not here to retire or relocate. I’m here to finish three books, to be quiet, to take inventory of myself, and most of all to connect with the divine. Daily I’m asking: Are you out there? And if yes, what do you want of me now?? What’s the plan?

It’s not a true retreat because I still teach and write. I still email like everyone else, I still track the media and internet doings. I’m still a mom to my grown and nearly grown son and daughter, which means I travel to them, and they to me.

The Squatter

This summer it was the end of my second year of the retreat when a woman showed up on the land and said, “Hi! I live here. You’re on my property. You’re trespassing.”

Okay, no. It wasn’t exactly like that. Initially, a neighbor drove onto the property in her rusty Ford pick-up.

“Hey,” she said over the rattling engine, “thought you should know that so-and-so is squatting by the mailboxes yonder.”

“Who is she?” I asked, trying to see this person who darted into the bushes.

“Oh. You didn’t know?” the neighbor said, her old truck belching exhaust. “She’s the one who broke into the house at the top of the land back in 2020. She was arrested back then, but I guess she’s back.”

Okay. This would have been helpful to know, I think, and soon am texting the owner of the property and the guy who vacations at the house on the upper deck. “We have a problem,” I write to both.

The Whole Story

The woman apparently grew up here two or three owners back and is convinced this is still her land. Back in 2020, she broke into the upper house, wrote a note that read: I won’t kill anyone today, rearranged all the furniture, pulled on some clothes that were in a dresser and climbed into the master bed for a nap.

The guy came home to this, called the cops, and she was hauled away.

A few weeks later, she broke into the barn and set up housekeeping. Again, she was arrested.

Indeed, she was back.

The neighbor drove away, wishing me luck, and I stood there watching the bushes intently.

All stories have three acts and at the end of the second act, there is a face-off between the antagonistic force(s) and the hero. I get that. I’m in my third act out here, I suppose, but I’m very much on the back foot. I had no idea I was called to be heroic on this retreat and I had no idea such an enemy existed.

The woman, my antagonist, crawled out of the brush and once again squatted under the mailboxes.

The man who rented the house on the upper deck, home for the weekend, came down and stood with me. While he retold the whole story of 2020 from his point of view, he also videotaped the woman and called the sheriff. I felt a slight relief because it wasn’t my second act. It was his. She wasn’t breaking into the cabin. She was after his place.

Okay. Now what?

Meanwhile, the woman finally stood, dusted herself off, and strode up the driveway. Medium height, strong looking, tough in the way of a horsewoman, fit, with hair up in a bun, she cut an intimidating presence. This was no wilting flower. I wouldn’t want to mess with her, I thought.

Meanwhile, my neighbor, still videotaping, let her know she couldn’t be there and that she had to leave. She argued a bit, saying this was her family land and we were trespassing.

The sheriff still didn’t come. The officers were busy with other situations that day. And, the woman eventually left, but every other day for the next month she was around the property, either skulking on the perimeter or down at the mailboxes.

Break in

Then it was mid-August. At ten at night, an alarm sounded from the upper house. Shrill and screaming.

Half asleep, I peered out the shades of my cabin and, instead of calling the sheriff, called my son.

“I can’t see if it is that woman or someone else,” I said.

“I’ll call 911,” he said. “Keep the lights off and make sure all the doors are locked.”

The glare of a high-beam flashlight bobbed down the drive, and soon someone (I could not see who) stomped onto my porch and whacked that flashlight against the front window, the glass front door, and then was trying all the doors.

“Mom? Mom?” my son said on the line, “you have to call 911. They won’t take the call from me.”

Shaken and my heart in my throat, I hung up and dialed.

For several harrowing minutes, I whispered the situation to a woman at a dispatch center who kept asking question after question: Name. Age. Address.

Meanwhile, this person continued to bang at the windows and work at the doors.

Phone to my ear, I pulled on pants, and shoes, and plotted to ease open a sliding glass door and run, while calmly (yeah, right) trying to answer these questions.

The person on the porch stomped off, the flashlight beam bobbing across the garden and then down into the blackberry bushes but still I could not be sure who it was. A woman or a man? I wasn’t sure. They were dressed in all black.

Meanwhile, my son called another neighbor, and soon this saint drove over. Shining his headlights toward the bushes, he kept this intruder in his sights.

The first to arrive was a highway patrolman. Then a sheriff. Then a man from the parks department.

These three men finally brought the person out of the bushes, and it was the same woman.

I remained in my cabin, watching, shaking, and talking to my son, while the woman was questioned for an hour. Eventually, the officers let her go, and she walked into the night.

Coming to the cabin, the three of them stood in the entry wearing their bulletproof vests and badges, all manner of hardware hanging from their belts. Arms crossed high, they all looked sheepish and slightly apologetic.

“She didn’t break in, Ma’am,” one of them said. “She’s only trespassing, and that’s not a house-able offense.” Another of them suggested I file a restraining order so that if this happens again, she will be arrested.

What does all this have to do with writing a book?

I’m not sure why I didn’t include this story in last week’s post about being stuck, but I didn’t. I mean, it’s my problem. Why add to your worries by dumping this weird tale into the mix? But I need to come clean with you because, just like last week, I’m still stuck!

Is it the Neurofeedback I wrote about last week that has tossed my brain into another dimension? Is this the effect of being on retreat for two years? Or, has something about this woman and her confused state of mind jolted me into a new creative space?

If it is the latter or even the former, maybe I simply have to accept. Maybe, just maybe, I should write something else (at least for a while)?

perseverance; noun

Continued effort to do or achieve something, even when this is difficult or takes a long time.

~ Cambridge Dictionary

When I published Blackbird, the overwhelming consensus from readers and reviewers was that the child in the book was one thing: Perseverant.

I suppose I’ve always detested that term and that quality, but I detest, even more, the lay-down-and-do-nothing strategy. Move, I’ve always told myself. MOVE! Which was why it was so horrible that night. I couldn’t move because it was dark, I was half asleep, and I did not know who was out there or what they might do.

I want to be in the know, I want to feel like I’m in control, and I want to trust that no matter what happens, it will all work out. That’s normal. That’s being human. But there are times—many times—when the reins slip out of my hands. People show up and act out their own reality. Retreats designed for peace and self-reflection become situations where you have to file restraining orders in a complex legal system, and it takes time, effort, energy, and focus to navigate that system. And books we wanted to write stop being interesting to us, and we feel flattened creatively.

Is that being perseverant or realistic? Or both? I’m not sure, and in the end, it doesn’t really matter.

Perhaps this situation is one of the answers I’ve been waiting to hear from the powers that be about what comes next. Perhaps, at this third act, I’m being told that life is a series of adjustments to complex situations: Now we are jolted out of bed and huddle in the dark. Now we call for help that isn’t fully helpful. Now we learn about a legal system that requires a great deal of patience. Now we return to our desk and look at something that mattered, a lot, and accept that we don’t care anymore, that it doesn’t matter. And we do what I’m doing now which is figure out what to do next while telling this odd tale.

None of this is as satisfying as a direct voice from a burning bush or a booming voice from the heavens, but I suppose the delivery of life’s wisdom is not up to me. My job, in the end, is to face what comes and then to…argh…persevere.

So, now I push through a restraining order, screw in fancy motion-sensitive cameras, and hang No Trespassing signs.

And I think about writing something new. No, it’s not about a horror novel, a Sweeney Todd with a murdering herbalist (which my editor of these posts asked! : ) It’s a story about several lives that begin and end over the course of history, where the primary character first falls into human existence out of a desire to be alive only to realize, once they are embodied, they want to go back to the oneness they’ve left behind. It’s Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss meets Life After Life by Kate Atkinson meets City of Angels with Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage. I’ve had all these stories banging around in my head, all these different lives lived as the heroine strives to go back home, for years. I guess I’m ready to stop thinking about it and get a draft on the page.

My greatest fear: I’ll start and feel as flat about this as about the other book. But…one step at a time. For now, I write this post and move my nearly finished novel to a bottom shelf.

For now, I look out the window and see if she’s out there lurking again.

For now, I check my cameras and talk to a lawyer who is helping me to prepare for the hearing with a judge (next month) who will hopefully turn a temporary restraining order into a permanent one.

For now, I wonder and worry: Will she show up in court and argue her case? Or not?

For now, I try to force my mind toward this new project and to write a few words and see how it feels.

For now…for now…for now…

Wish me luck and I will, as always, send you positive vibes, too.

Your Turn:

If you were nearly done with a book but couldn’t find your way to finish it, would you start a new project?

Tell us. We are listening.

~ Jennifer, 💗