Write Your Books by Martha Reed

A writer friend of mine unexpectedly died this month. Her Celebration of Life was well organized and very well attended. While listening to the many heartfelt songs, poems, and tributes, I was overwhelmed by the volume of non-writerly activities she had supported in her daily hours.

She was a driving and volcanic force behind a spiraling galaxy of vital community, social and political activism, and grant-writing and fund-raising efforts. She was a professional mediator who helped troubled teens. She was a powerful advocate for women and families in need. Her friendships were true blue, deeply felt, long-standing, all-encompassing, and diverse. She took advantage of every opportunity to travel to distant shores and exotic lands. She founded the first writer’s group I joined, ushering newbie me into a community of creative fiction writers that sustains me to this day.

I left her celebration dazed, wondering where I had parked my car and thinking: “Holy heck, when did she sleep?” Sliding into my car, I reviewed my life feeling like a slacker until it dawned on me that she had never completed the manuscript of her debut novel. Now we will never know what could have been written. Death has taken her pen.

This end result raised a few questions in my mind: Gabriel Garcia Marquez told his sons to destroy his final unfinished novel. The manuscript was too rambling; it had too many pieces; it was too scattered. He had run out of creative editing lifetime. Despite his direction, his sons are readying it for publication. What are your thoughts on this posthumous publication?

After author Robert Ludlum died, author Brian Freeman was approached by the Ludlum estate to continue writing the Jason Bourne series. How do you feel about an author completing or extending another author’s series post-mortem?

How about taking a dead author’s characters and using them for entirely new creative fiction? Is that a respectful acquisition, or an aggressive hijacking?

This reflection on an author’s unfinished work isn’t a judgment or a justification. We all write on borrowed time. The clock is ticking. I get it. Sue Grafton never finished writing her murder mystery alphabet by publishing “Z.”

Writing a full-length novel is a daunting task. It daunts me every time I start drafting a new one. The spur in my giddy-up is that I simply can’t fathom doing anything else with my earthly time. Every time I begin, I stop and wonder: Is it time to hang it up, to find something else to do to fill my Book of Hours, to quit doing this? Then, as I meditate on the joy the act of stretching my human imagination to its outermost limits and finding exactly the right words to add to my latest story brings me, I open my laptop and begin.

When it comes time for my celebration of life, I want my family to hand out cupcakes and bookmarks, and perhaps in some future time some reader will open one of my books and from the other side, I’ll speak again.

Still not convinced that our books are our timeless legacy? Click this link to hear Dame Judy Dench recite a Shakespearean sonnet and enjoy hearing The Bard’s voice speak to us with modern relevance from roughly four hundred and thirty years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_X1dbO-quI