There’s a peculiar kind of madness in finishing a book, knowing exactly what it cost you, and choosing to open it again.
I didn’t begin the year intending to write two novels.
I had sixteen chapters of a story I’d abandoned a year earlier. I couldn’t remember its title. I didn’t particularly care. As far as I was concerned, it could stay exactly where I’d left it.
Grace Kelleway disagreed.
She had been quiet for a year. Then she wasn’t.
By mid-April, I was writing her again. By late June, I had a second draft of Purgatory.
Then I went back to SEVERED.
Purgatory wasn’t an afterthought. I wrote SEVERED, dug into its intricate details, lived there. It wasn’t until the end of September, when I’d almost completed the third draft of SEVERED, that Purgatory came calling again.
Grace dragged me back in.
The strange thing about going back to an abandoned story is that the person who wrote it is no longer quite the person reading it.
Finishing the second draft of PURGATORY at the end of this past July was a feat in itself. I, the author, didn’t want to write it, but Grace Kelleway jumped onto my page and set it on fire. By the time I finished, I knew the story was a thousand times different than the first draft I’d written. Miles, oceans apart from my original Grace.
Mercy Kesilmiş, my FMC from SEVERED, came calling. I didn’t take a breath. I dove from one draft directly into the other. I couldn’t stop myself. This is my brain, and my process. Shifting gears is never an easy thing for me. If you know anything about AuDHD/Divergent brains, you know it’s not easy. Writing and shifting from one type of literary psychological writing to the next seems to be my niche.
By the time the third draft of SEVERED was winding down in the last week of September, Grace came calling. “Get ready, CM. I’m up next.”
The deadline to jump in is fast approaching, and Grace Kelleway has the lead, and I am along for the ride.
-CM Seybolt
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