Struggling with a Novel

My entire manuscript is sitting here on my desk and I keep fooling with it. When will I allow it to go forth into the world? When will I feel it is done? How will I know it? I give you the beginning, and maybe that will give me the courage to let it go. "My mother died in the middle of the night during daffodil days. A year later, above Willow Beach, daffodils roam the hillside and brighten a cool cloudless day. The rippling waves of Lake Erie wash over the sandy shore and claim it with the sigh of letting go. Moments after it succumbs to the land, the water pulls back and under, rolling out again, collecting energy and vigor, like a long intake of breath. The water falls into the depths then reaches for the far horizon, a falling and rising that is incessant and urgent, not to be ignored. The ancient rhythm of water calms and rejuvenates me." That wasn't so hard--send me some encouraging words.

Hadley Hemingway, the Paris Wife

I need to write in my journal about local Cleveland writer Paula McLain's book The Paris Wife. The book was so exquisite, so full of passages I marked to be remembered, that I don't know where to start. The book captured the feel of the Lost Generation's Paris and realistically took us into Hadley's marriage to a determined young writer. What was most surprising was how much the book brought Hemingway's A Moveable Feast to me, and it's been many years since I read it. The spare writing and voice were haunting--I was reading a story by Hemingway written by a woman. When Hadley finally knew she'd lost Ernest to Pauline, "he climbed behind me and brought his arms around and tucked is knees against the backs of mine, hugging me as tightly as possible. 'There's a good cat,' he said to the back of my neck. 'Please sleep now.' I started to shake. 'Let's not do this. I can't.' 'Yes, you can. It's already done, my love.' And he rocked us back and forth as we both cried, and when I slept finally, I didn't give in to it as much as I was taken over by it, like a sickness or like death.'" The pain was shown, not told, and that's how the whole book went, even though it was told in third person from the Paris wife's point of view. We sensed, all the way through, that neither Ernest or Hemingway had any control over their destiny. They loved each other even as the marriage was ending. Exquisite.