This Is the Story of You: on page proofs and distance

It has been a week of many words. A read and review of a very favorite author for the Chicago Tribune. The final page proofing of Love: A Philadelphia Affair, due out in September. The new afterword for the fourth edition of Handling the Truth . Revisions of the talk about home (what we learn about it in the novels we read) for the Moravian Writers' Conference, to be held this very weekend. And then, yesterday, this: the arrival of the proof pages for This Is the Story of You, a mystery set in the aftermath of a Jersey-style storm, due out from Chronicle next spring.

I'm going to leave this particular work until next week—unsure of my ability to read the story right just now. But what I want to say in this moment is this: time is our biggest ally in this writing life. The distance the process—from writing to redrafting to editing to copy editing to proof page reading—gives us from our own work. I needed months between the copy editing of Love and the proofing to see what problems still existed. I needed two years since the publication of Handling to know what else I had to say about memoir (and to be able to say it all in 1,000 words). I needed three weeks to re-read many beloved novels to know what I think about literary home, and then another week of writing and revisions to get the talk in order.

As I have needed time away from Story, which was written more than a year ago, to know if I've written as purely and truly and meaningfully as I could. I won't know, precisely, what is in those pages until I sit with them again. The mystery is a mystery to me. I have one last chance to figure out if it works.