A Tale of Two Authors: Part Two
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." - A Tale of Two Cities
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
Okay. Let’s not get too dramatic. It was probably somewhere in between. I mean, I (Kirsten) had just returned from a two-week trip to Italy, for goodness sake. Things couldn’t have been that bad. However, if we’re talking about my writing, all right, yeah, it was a pretty bad season. You know, the deepest of inspiration depressions. I hadn’t written for fun for two years. Two years!
"It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness."
Actually, both of these can be true at the same time. I was finishing up my Bachelor’s degree in English, the first step in my two-part higher-education plan. I was gaining plenty of knowledge about literature and writing. The foolishness came in my lack of application. At least, I was writing for school. All the time. I was writing papers every time I turned around, but I wasn’t writing for the pleasure of writing, and that put me in a place of real burn-out. I’d joined an online writer’s community earlier in the year in hopes of getting my writing life back to its vibrant, inspired, and motivated self, but even still, I was introverting on an online community. I did a lot of reading, but not a lot of interacting, which kept me from finding any accountability partners or well-meaning souls who were interested in my consistent writing. (This may or may not have been intentionally done.) Just before meeting Marit, I determined to push past the tiny confines of my comfort zone and start investing in the Young Writer’s Community. So, I responded to a post. And the rest...is history.
"It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity."
Nope. It was definitely just the “epoch of incredulity.” What I couldn’t believe was that I was writing a novel with a girl I’d met only a week earlier! What I also couldn’t believe was that I was excited about it, amidst all of the other converging busyness of the summer.
"It was the season of Light…"
And we certainly went at the speed of light! Marit and I started our Mended journey in late June of 2017, and that journey was not only the one we created on paper, but a lasting friendship that has blossomed over hours of Skype calls and a fantastic week spent together, for the first time ever, in person!
"It was the season of Darkness…"
Our periods of the evil and dreaded writer’s block were as brief as the Great American Eclipse, which just so happened to pass over us midway through our five-month journey, and we blasted through inspiration depressions through serious plotting. brainstorming and pushing each other to write. Okay, well, it was more like Marit pushing me to write, but we’re co-writers, so we don’t make specifications.
"It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."
Well, actually, as mentioned previously, we completed Mended in five months, to the day, between neither of these extremes from June to November. Coincidental perks for us!
"We had everything before us…"
We had an entire novel mapped out and plotted, ready to be written within two days of the original prompt.
"We had nothing before us…"
Now we just had to write it.
And write we did. We took that blank Google document by storm and didn’t stop until we were finished. Mended now sees itself in the second stage of revision and aspires to publication in the future.
I never would have thought a year ago that I would be sitting here, writing this post. I never in a million years would have thought I’d have co-written a novel with a girl I didn’t meet in person until after the first draft was finished. Yet here I sit, clickety-clacking away at the keyboard. And there on my bookshelf beams the three-inch copy of the first draft. Isn’t it great how the Lord works in ways we never would have thought possible? It’s great to know that even in the midst of our busy, broken, and blundering lives, He can take our “best of times” and our “worst of times,” and mend them all. And it’s such a beautiful thing when He makes “the write way” clear and certain.