"The End"
Two months of being someone who is not writing a book.
I arrived at my book’s conclusion in January of this year, a few weeks after my twenty-seventh birthday, a few days before my deadline. I’ve been knowing how it will end for months now, but getting there was a matter of dragging feet, of self-doubt, of side trips and backroads and tangents. I’m not usually a procrastinator—my brand of anxiety being the sort that sets a personal deadline days or weeks before the actual last minute. But this was so big, so close. Even now, weeks later, it doesn’t feel over.
I finished the book at home, which was not where I was supposed to finish it. That last week of January I’d taken off work and moved into the tiny house just beside the NUNU Art & Culture Collective in Arnaudville. Every time I’d fantasized about writing those two words of finality, I’d pictured myself cocooned in that sweet isolation of retreat, looking out the window as the sun set over the rice fields.
But there were tornado warnings that night. NUNU’s owner George Marks texted me, suggesting I spend the evening, maybe the night, in the gallery—which would be more secure than the “Shiny Tiny”. When the electricity in the gallery went out, I made a quick calculation. I could probably make it to my house in Lafayette, thirty minutes away, before the storm rolled in.
And so I was home. Curled up in the same chaise I’d started writing this book in back in 2017, the one that’s followed me from my college house in Baton Rouge to the rental in Scott to our forever home in Lafayette. My cat was nestled under my arm and my husband sleeping in our bed down the hall, the wind whistling outside the window.
When I realized there were no more words, that I’d completed the damn thing, I didn’t wake him. I didn’t move. I blinked at the screen, and I breathed in the moment—realizing this was one of the last that this story would belong to me alone.
In the grand scheme of things, six years is not a very long time. It’s certainly not an especially long time to spend writing a book.
But in a real sense, I’ve grown up trying to tell this story. When I wrote the very first drafts, I was an undergraduate English major with vague dreams of being a “writer,” whatever that might mean—angsty with the tensions of who I had been and who I wanted to be, of where I had come from and where I was going.
It would be silly and a downright lie to say “I’ve got it all figured out now.” But the ground beneath my feet has become so much more steady. Since 2017, there’s been leaving, and returning. Reclaiming and redefining. Risk-taking. There’s been the universal disruption of a global pandemic. Since then, I’ve said goodbye to people I’ve loved. And love, I’ve fallen in it—inviting someone over the threshold of my life, permanently.
And all along, this story has followed, a specter in the background of everything.
For the past several weeks, while my editor is working her way through the completed manuscript, I’ve allowed myself the luxury of being someone who isn’t writing a book. I spent a weekend away with my husband, and plenty of much-needed time with my friends, with my brothers, with my brand new god-daughter. In February, I threw myself into making my first Mardi Gras costume—trailing glitter and thread and chunks of glue all over our house
In March, I started reading about Louisiana wildflowers and searching for them in my backyard, leisurely plucking the fleabane and lyreleaf sage and taping them into a notebook, labeling them with their scientific names.
I’ve cleaned out all our closets and the dusty, spidery garden shed we’ve mostly avoided since we bought this property almost a year ago. I have grand plans for our balcony, which we haven’t been able to get to without stepping over the ever-shifting mountain of research material in the office in front of it.
The books I’ve been reading are fiction, set in places far from Louisiana, with no trace of murder. Life has flooded in, along with time. Suddenly, there is so much time.
It's all temporary, of course. A vacation. I’ve written “The End” so that someday people might read everything before it. My work is not done. Soon, I’ll dive back in—smoothing out edges, reorganizing structure, killing my darlings. Transforming this thing that emerged from me into something designed for you.
It’s exhilarating and terrifying, imagining this book out in the wilds of the world, the back door open, forty years of sorrows pouring out—me no longer holding it, protected within the confines of process. Perhaps this is part of why I’ve felt compelled to start this newsletter, to foster some semblance of control. To start opening the door now, slowly, letting it creak and creak and creak. In this way I have the opportunity to set expectations, allowing whispers to escape into the wind. But it also allows me glimpses of you, reader. Peeks at who you might be, chances to convene before entrusting this story into your hands.
Thank you for being here, for joining me on this journey. “The End” has always only been another beginning. More to come.
Updates:
This spring, I’ll be presenting my very first readings and discussions of HOME OF THE HAPPY. If you live in the Acadiana or Baton Rouge areas and feel like listening to me drone on a little, I’d love to see you:
March 29: At Festival of Words Cultural Arts Collective Reading Series at The Hive in Grand Coteau, I’ll be discussing my interviewing process as I set out to document my family history, and reading a short excerpt from the manuscript. I’ll be joined by the talented Southwest Louisiana poet, Liz Burk. The reading begins at 6:30 pm.
April 22: As part of Baton Rouge’s annual Delta Mouth Literary Festival—hosted by LSU’s English Department, The Southern Review, New Delta Review, and the English Graduate School Association—I’ll be taking part in a reading and panel discussion on Louisiana’s culture and environment, joined by Louisiana poet Alison Pelegrin and moderated by Dr. Chris Barrett from LSU’s English Department. The panel takes place at noon at the LSU Coastal Ecosystem Design School, and is just one of the festival’s many exciting events, featuring a slate of remarkable writers I’m honored to share space with.