The Story of A Story (a.k.a How I wrote my Novel)

 

This is the story of how I wrote my novel. Now that I have a (fabulous, wonderful) agent, I feel I can finally say – I did it! I wrote a book!

Even though, why should we wait for affirmation from others? If you’ve written a book, and feel satisfied with it, celebrate it now!

Even though perhaps I’m being premature, because what if no editor likes my story and it languishes unpublishable on my Google drive?

But it is a book. And people (unrelated strangers!) have read and liked it. And heck, I’ll say it, I’ve read and it and been very proud of myself, in that "did I really write that?" way.

Anyway, back to the story-  I wrote a novel, and this is the story of that story.

15 years ago, when I was a single serial-Shidduch-dates (think Faye on Jewish Matchmaking style Shidduch dates), I used to blog about girl-going-on-arranged-matches-with-yeshiva-students who balances that with being a woman-software-engineer-in-hi-tech. I flittered between 2 worlds, every day, and every date. It was funny. It was ironic. And sometimes it was hard.

And I started to write a novel “The Matchmaker Diaries” about 3 young women dating in that “Jewish Matchmaker world”, and I even posted the chapters up on this blog as I wrote them (because once you get used to instantaneous reader feedback, it’s hard to give that up).

And everything was going great. I even had plans to fly to New York and enroll in a summer MFA program.

And then something happened.

I met TCO (The Chosen One), and fell in love, and got married to him.

Now that was amazing, my literal dream come true, but there was a part of me that kinda wished I’d met him just a few months – well- ahem- later. After I’d honed my craft in New York. After I’d finished my novel. (Confession: I’m an unromantic pragmatist who watches Devil Wears Prada and goes “Nooo, you were so close! First get that promotion! Don’t give it all up now!”)

Life happened, I changed jobs, I had a master’s degree to complete, some kids came along – I was on a cartwheel of busy-ness and I mourned my book. I thought I’d sacrificed my writing dreams on the altar of marital bliss.

I opened up my manuscript file a few times, but just wasn’t able to connect to the story in the same way I did before.

And then, a couple of things happened.

First of all- I went through something very big, and I couldn’t talk about it, to almost anyone, it was so taboo. And I started to write about it, first a diary, then a heavily censored and watered-down story that no Orthodox magazine would publish because it was “too graphic”, and finally an essay for Tablet magazine.

And a year later – I had an idea. A story idea. And I really loved it. I didn’t have time to write it, but I thought about it, a lot, and wrote down the outline. And every time I had another plot twist- I wrote that down too. Not  “real” writing, but a collection of jotted notes.

And then, when I was on maternity leave, I took those 3 stories – Noa the ambitious software engineer who is also a Shidduch dater at the mercy of matchmakers, Batsheva who went through something so taboo she could only talk about it to her diary, and Shulamit whose life was turned upside down and must make a decision- did she want this life?

I wove them together in a novel. I wrote as my baby slept and when she gurgled on the playmat and while I nursed her awkwardly balanced on my knees in front of my laptop.

Then I needed to go back to work. Because, you know, money. But I had a first draft.

And so ends part 1.