In the lead-up to the We Are The Light publication, I wrote the first draft of a novel that electrifies my soul. I was convinced it was my magnum opus.
During the WATL book tour, I did many podcasts and print interviews; I traveled the country giving live talks; and I went to New York City, where my agent, editor, and entire publishing team saw me speak to The Book Of The Month staff. Throughout it all, people seemed to respond positively to my anecdotes, which often had more to do with my personal life than the novel I was promoting. That wasn’t intentional. I was mostly just answering interview questions. I was being honest.
When book tour ended and I returned home, I finally let Alicia read a draft of the new novel. Her soul was not electrified. She had a lot of notes, the biggest of which was to shift my first-person point of view to another character, which meant a complete page-one rewrite and obliterating what I felt was the entire point of the story. We had never been further apart on an assessment of my work. This confused me. Then it plunged me into a creative depression.
For the next year and a half, I tried to rewrite the first-person novel from a different point of view. But I could not find a way to do it. At least not one that lit up my soul.
My analyst offered to help get me creatively unstuck, but I kept refusing to discuss my ‘failed manuscript.’ When it finally became obvious to both of us that I was being masochistically stubborn—or in Jungian terms, I was complexed—he forced the issue, insisting that we read parts during a session. When it first came time to do so, I stalled by going to the bathroom. When I returned to our session, my analyst was smiling paternally. He teared up when we read the opening pages together. As his emotions connected with the characters, mine could as well. And that broke the spell. Pretty much instantly. What once felt dead was miraculously breathing again.
For the first time in a year and four months, I started working on the book with enthusiasm and couldn’t stop. I kept the original point of view and strode forward confidently. I began routinely waking up at four AM with an extraordinary amount of energy, editing for twelve hours straight, making the manuscript a little truer each day. That went on for weeks.
Meanwhile, during many sessions, my analyst read the entire novel aloud as I listened and made notes. He often paused to provide valuable feedback and suggestions, based on the way his psyche reacted to the text. He even crafted unique voices for each character, helping reanimate what I had once written off as entirely lost. He also interpreted the text, deepening the psychological profile of the characters and linking it all to my lived experiences. Together we refined aspects of the manuscript. And we processed how I reacted. I’d never before done anything like this. It was incredibly valuable from an editing standpoint. And I felt liberated.
When we finished, my analyst encouraged me to write a foreword, psychologically setting up the reader for the experience that they were about to have, which—admittedly—was somewhat unusual, but maybe in the best of ways.
I didn’t want to include a foreword and argued with my analyst. He was persistent. I ended up writing one about moving to Beaufort to help my father battle his dementia and the surprising intimacy that the two of us now sometimes share, after a lifetime of often being at odds. I was pleased with the foreword. Alicia loved it. So did my analyst. Both of them said I should next write a non-fiction book about my father. Tackling a full-length manuscript about my relationship with Dad felt big, and I worried that I had more living, more analysis, and more personal growth to do first, but I took their positive response as a good omen.
My agent didn’t know that the novel was headed his way, so it took him a little more than a week to read it. As I previously mentioned here on TWBM, he liked it and thought my editor would too.
But it took my editor more than three weeks to respond, which I knew was not a good sign. In my experience—both in New York and Los Angeles—industry people tend to move faster than that when they want something and feel passionate. Especially folks with whom I have an established and positive relationship.
“Mixed news,” my agent said to me on the phone. “And it’s not all bad.”
While my editor respected the novel, it was my foreword—about Dad and me—that lit up his soul. Instead of buying what I had submitted, he offered me a memoir deal. The offer was flattering, intriguing, and one-hundred-percent unexpected. But there was a catch. While I was contractually free to publish the rejected novel elsewhere, for many industry-related reasons, my team advised against doing so.
The cost of taking the memoir deal? What sacrifice was required?
Putting aside—at least for now—the novel that still lights up my soul.
I wasn’t sure what to do.
Friends agreed it was a tough decision.
Alicia suggested that I had written the novel solely for myself. She reminded me that I had worked through personal trauma using the new novel in analysis. And maybe all that was preparation for the memoir. She advised being grateful and throwing myself into the next project.
My analyst—who had strongly encouraged me to get the novel into the world—also said it was a very important bit of soul work, which had helped me understand and integrate much psychological material. Perhaps that had been its primary purpose. We couldn’t know for sure. And this memoir offer—a fantastic opportunity—had indeed emerged.
Over the past fifty years, I have slowly learned the value of being the leaf in the stream. Going with the current, without fighting inevitability. That saves precious energy and puts us in proper relationship with forces greater than us.
And, yet, ego was screaming things like, “Your novel is genius! You can’t sacrifice it! You worked so hard! For years! You cut many veins! You were so brave! It electrifies your soul!”
It was a heady few days.
I was intrigued by my editor’s offer to write a memoir. Part of me absolutely wanted to do that. And part of me was devastated by the knowledge that my most recent novel was headed for a drawer. A very young part of me was—and still is—terrified of writing non-fiction about my father.
So what did I decide?
Some of you here at TWBM had previously encouraged me to write a memoir. I thank you for that and definitely counted those votes.
I first let the words, “I want to write a book about my dad,” escape through my lips back in 2005. I was speaking privately with my semester-one creative advisor at the now defunct Goddard MFA program. She was trying to get me to focus on a single subject and pick a theme. But my creative thesis didn’t end up being a book about my father. I was barely thirty years old, far too green to understand the psychological interplay that was rippling through several generations of Quick men.
It’s taken me two decades of working through hard emotions, four years of intense analysis, and a fateful kick in the career to finally earn some knowledge and get up the courage, but here I finally am.
I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be publishing a memoir with Avid Reader Press in a few years. (I’ve got to write it first!)
My analyst has often referenced the quote below, which is widely attributed to Carl Jung:
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
The memoir deal definitely isn’t the result of conscious planning. Something unconscious, something inside of me—that is much wiser than my ego—has been tinkering with my personal narrative, subconsciously speaking with others, and paving the way for this current project. In retrospect, I can see everything working toward this moment. Even the writing I’ve been doing here on Substack seems a harbinger for my foray into memoir writing. But I didn’t realize what I was conjuring. I was convinced my tenth published book should be a novel. Or maybe that was how I kept ego distracted, while the rest of my psyche put hands on the Matthew Quick steering wheel.
I’m looking forward to working collaboratively with my editor, who has shepherded many a writer through non-fiction projects. Our first Zoom meeting was invigorating and overwhelmingly optimistic.
Thanks for your support, dear readers. You are appreciated.
Good things ahead.
PS - Did you read the August 28th post? Achingly Human And Less Alone In The World (What Good Souls Should Do)
