Confessions of a Sequester Wastrel: Yes, My Second Novel Should Be Done, But It Isn’t. Bite Me

Forgive me, novel #2, there is much that I have squandered. I had three months of unobligated, totally empty pandemic time I should have been devoting to you, and instead, I wasted it. I don’t know where it went (but calories and television were involved). I promise it wasn’t even fun (they were stupid wine-and-pizza calories; hypnotizing, beyond-my-control Netflix and news programs). The empty hours just disappeared (I promise it wasn’t puzzles, baking, or closet cleaning). They are just…gone. And I know you remain partially written, spread out across the desk I keep passing on the way to the television… and the refrigerator. I understand how pissed off you must be. Mea culpa. You may never forgive me, but, perhaps, I can make you understand.

The Sentence: Solitary Confinement

Okay, I acknowledge my privilege. I’m fortunate that during this time I have not been trying to keep a business going (it wouldn’t have made it), preventing a sick spouse or a mother in senior living from getting the virus (neither would have made it), home schooling (God forbid), or dealing with the waxing and waning of the anxiety of another (’nuff said). When isolating alone, and taking all precautions, I truly have only risked cabin fever . . . but that is not to be discounted entirely. I have profoundly missed having a pod of fellow prisoners with whom I could have shared safe cooties and conversation—even more than I missed not having outside space (A balcony? My kingdom for a balcony!). This has been 100% solo, Han, and it has. . . well . . . sucked.

Lockdown. Month One. The Early Days

The first few weeks, when it seemed more of a staycation, before we realized it was an actual sentence (even with food delivered, very nearly, through a slot in the door), I did what most did—descended into the malaise of a vast immediate future without deadlines. What was the hurry? I had sixty whole days to get to my book. I wore an indentation in the couch watching ALL episodes of a single Netflix Original within the same day or two (and often until 2 a.m.), emptying ALL bottles in the wine rack (often within the same day or two), and pushing the edge of the envelope with my existing food delivery vendors—”surprise me,” I said about my pizza, anything but pineapples. I got ripe olives. Hmm . . .

It was dull, but not without its pleasures. The demented family of Ozark became strangely relatable, the Broadchurch bunch somehow more virtuous. But by season three of The Last Kingdom, when I was deeply relating to my Scandinavian kinsmen (marauding Danes in Alfred’s England), their adventures were taking over my own life and finding me wanting. If they had been in lockdown in my living room, would they not attack it with relish, blasting through my computer with sword slashes of inspiration, machine-gun flurries of gut-punching scenes, daggers of witty dialogue, and bloody backstory? What a story sissy, they’d call me with disgust.

As the month went on and I’d get messages from people about how they’d finally cleaned their basements, organized their digital photos, and could begin to see the light of the end of their story, novel, memoir, I felt truly ashamed of myself. I lurked in the dust of my uncleaned condo cave. I was weak. I was worthless. This was not sustainable. And yet, when guilt overcame me, I changed the channel to Amazon Prime.

Lockdown: Month Two. Boredom

By this time the deprivation of no health club, lakefront, or parks in which to escape outside my condo walls for a precious hour of exercise was approaching tragic. There was perpetual gunk in my throat that gave a scouring-powder quality to my voice when I answered the phone at 2 or 3 p.m., the first time I’d talked out loud all day. Zoom calls descended into verbal combat—and in my desperation for discourse I took unfair advantage of the speaker-delay, leaving others pouting because they didn’t get their turn. I noticed an absence of recall, incomprehension of information that previously was reliable—names of people . . . or book titles . . . entire countries, the inability to add in my head. In the absence of a village, everything was taking a moment or more (I know, I know. It’s because I refuse to do puzzles). I researched to find out if isolation can lead to early dementia. Alarmingly, I find it’s possible. Still, it’s another excuse. I can hardly write if I’m losing my mind. Right?

Easter in lock down: tp instead of chocolate eggs.

Sequester wardrobe, ready for incineration.

My sequester wardrobe descended into unmistakable rag-tag. Five pairs of ancient Lululemon yoga pants and three oversized t-shirts: one with a symbol of The Year of the Dog from Tsingtao Beer; one threadbare to the point of see-through, left over from the swag bag of the opening of Chicago’s Bloomingdales back in the ’80s; and a nearly-to-my-knees, overwashed-into-baby-softness, official Dragonette, Inc. shirt from my entrepreneurial years, the dragon logo peeled away except for a few fiery curves. They were on their last legs anyway, why not just finish them off? I will burn them at the end of the pandemic, I promise myself. Meanwhile, wearing them is a symbol of survival.

I was appalled to find that my many packages–my lifeline—were displayed on a “safe” table, next to the doorman, fully exposed to the legions of visitors to the high-traffic building to which my condo tower belongs: the wine (is anyone counting?), the supplies for all three juice fasts (the first worked so well; the other two, not so much), the attempts at pre-made, week-at-a-time delivery meals. The latter made me think of the comment by humorist Dave Barry about frozen entrees: “So convenient they are even partially digested for you.”

Month Two Interlude: Encounter with a Human

Garbage Room: Scene of the Potential Crime

Six weeks in, I contemplated severely maiming my neighbor in the garbage room on our floor. Here I was, carrying a trash bag weighed down by wine bottles and foam food containers, in my sequester rags. He was dressed as if fresh for golf, depositing a tiny bag and a broken-down, neatly folded cardboard box (who does that?). We were having a mask-and-glove conversation in response to the question, “How are you doing with all this?” I answered with a shrug, holding up my bag, the ponytail of my Pebbles pandemic hairstyle ascending to the ceiling.

“I figured I had a binary choice,” he said, oozing discipline and—did I catch it?—a whiff of judgment. “I could go the junk food route and sit around or I could make it work for me.” He went on to recount his hours of exercise—biking, walking, running—he even bought a contraption he could put on the back wheel of his bike and pedal inside if it was raining. And, in fact, I’d often hear him clomping away while I waited near his door for a pandemically appropriate empty elevator. Nice to have the mystery of that rhythmic huffing sound cleared up. He had lost twenty-two pounds.

Did I mention he’d also used the time to edit his third medical thriller and has begun a fourth? There must be a can with a ragged edge in my bag, I thought. Or, I could just drop the bag on one of those athletic feet to hobble all that achievement. You know the feeling?

Every time he sees me, he asks how my book is coming along. Grrr . . .

Month Two: Interlude: Breakdown

By the end of the month, the weather had warmed up to the point where I could no longer zip my three-quarter-length parka over my slept-in clothes and pull the hood tight, allowing me to venture out for quick trips to Walgreens, 7-Eleven, or the mailbox incognito and without foundation garments.

I found myself regularly going bat-shit for about five minutes every other day, symbolically pounding on my picture windows here in Planet Condo, desperate to escape, then talking myself down by realizing there wasn’t a single place on the globe to go, not to mention the petri dish of any vehicle of transportation.

When the governor extended the lockdown into a third month, I LOST IT. Click here to read the ugly details.

Lockdown: Month Three. It’s Becoming a Way of life

The Relentless 90-Day View from Planet Condo

Alas, I must be an adult, put one house-shoe-encased foot in front of the other, and make the most of my tiny environment, even if it feels like No Exit. If Matt Damon can do it on Mars, I can do it here on Planet Condo.

I saw my neighbor again, he asked me how my book was going . . . again. It cut to the quick of my guilt. I had already begun to get kick-in-the-butt messages on social media from other writers: This time has been a gift, no distractions, like a retreat where you can get three months of work done in one. I’ve gained appreciation for the simple pleasures of life. I meditate, write in my journal, map out my projects for the rest of my life. Above all, I have FINISHED my novel, memoir, essay collection and am rewarding myself with quiet time, sitting here in my garden with brie and a lovely glass of Chablis.

Bite me again. My community had passed me up while I was still mired here in inertia. I guilted myself into developing lists: finish the first draft of this damn novel, an essay that is near the finish line, a blog post, clean out my writing space and dump all the detritus from my last novel. It didn’t stop there.

It was also a great time to end my coffee/wine/carb/MSNBC addictions, lose the six pounds that have been hanging around since the holidays (it used to be five), sit still long enough to listen to my meditation app, finally buy that Scriveners writing software and learn it (though I lack access to the recommended millennial guide), get through the TBR file of friends’ books that I need to review/blurb. I was ambitious. Who doesn’t love a list? Cross those puppies off, one by one, and this sequester time will have been fruitful after all, a gift.

What I did instead:

—A lot of research. Of greatest interest were stories in legit publications (Forbes! The New York Times!) about recommended sexual practices for now and the foreseeable future, most likely forever: your best partner is yourself, you need to be unabashedly creative on Zoom—pretend only your intended is watching—consider practices that are so bizarre, even the article had to include the line “Yes, we did just say that?” Check it out. “Masks, No Kissing and ‘a Little Kinky’: Dating and Sex in a Pandemic.” Celibacy will allow me to free up a great deal of time for writing. You know, in the future.

sent myself flowers since there was no spring.

—I replaced my social-media person. Actually, she replaced me. With the pandemic, she needed a full-time job. I hired a part-time publicist who had been laid off from her full-time job. My karma has been fulfilled 🙏🏻Whew! Now my conscience will be free for . . . writing.

—I broke two wine glasses, 🥂 and wore a hole in my sequester sweater. They are in my lockdown debris pile, ready for the fire (though realistically, in my high-rise, for the garbage chute). Nothing to get in the way of . . . you know.

—I switched out my closet. Winter to summer street clothes. I visit the latter occasionally, apologizing for neglect. I will be switching them back soon. Déjà vu. It will be as if spring and summer didn’t even happen, and therefore there were no weeks in which I didn’t write.

—I made a to-do list: find a resource to restuff my couch, buy new leisure wear, join Weight Watchers/AA/a meditation group/a hands-free dating site, buy sex toys designed for solitary use that will be delivered in plain packaging, buy a new TV with a sound system that will pick up the dialogue of mumbling English actors, get a new sweater, cancel all delivery services, look up the address of the nearest grocery store, open old dust-covered cookbooks, and see if I can remember the basics, donate wine rack. Clear the decks from distractions so I will be able to write.

Phase Four: Reentry and a Do-over

I had big plans for this year, the countdown to a major birthday on November 4. They were all dashed. But some wise person posted a hopeful message on FaceBook that resonates.

“I’m not counting this year. After all, nothing happened.”

Words to live by. So I have another year . . . a do-over, in my mind, that I will use more wisely.

Libby Wheeler, author of The Asher Trilogy, has been my Lockdown Lifeline, Helping me turn the corner from malaise to manuscript.

What did save me, seriously, is that midway through Month Two, I reconnected with a writer who lives hours away. Our three-hour weekly calls have been my lifeline, and we are both making more progress on our novels than we have in a year. We text each other daily at dawn to verify we’re sitting at our desks. And we’re kind to each other if we miss. Someday soon, when we’ve completed the first drafts we’ve promised ourselves will be done by Labor Day, we will meet with our masks in the outside garden of a café for brie and Chablis.

I may bring some home for my neighbor. He’s really a nice guy. He doesn’t know I wanted to kill him.

And what do you have to confess?

Final Thought: The Japanese have been forbidden to scream while on roller coasters because it spreads the coronavirus. Instead, they have been encouraged to do what I think defines the entire sequester:

Scream inside your heart.

That’s what we’ve really all been doing, right? Let’s keep it up. Make it loud enough to be heard on the page.

What I DID Do During Lockdown

Deborah Kalb - @Deborahkalb

Held two virtual Book Club Meetings in chicago and Evanston for The Fourteenth of September.

Coming Up July 30th.

Coming Up: July/August TBD

A reading for The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. Lighting so bad I look like a newscaster taping from her basement.

Joined.

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Fifty Years Ago Today: When the Whole World Finally Started Watching

They always say that Vietnam was the first war we saw in our living rooms as we watched the nightly TV news. I don’t recall those images as much as I should have, but I absolutely remember the night I watched the war at home—as I sat on the ’60s-splashed orange-flowered couch in the living room—when the police jumped out of the paddy wagon and began beating young people. This was happening in my hometown, only an hour from the suburb where I lived. And I was watching it with my mother—a World War II veteran. It was when the generation gap disappeared for us for a brief moment. It was the first time we agreed in months, and the last time we’d agree, for a long, long time. This was inexcusable. This was not America.

Another Golden Anniversary from the Year that Turned the World on Its End

It was fifty years ago today that the Democratic Convention in Chicago was held, finishing off a long reign of the Democratic Party that began with the great hope of John Kennedy and ended in tragedy—with major achievements undermined by an inability to end the Vietnam War. It also shattered the image of Chicago as the City that Worked, super-charged the antiwar effort, and polarized the nation.

Until the violent images appeared on television, I remember that, though the war was heavy on our minds, it was hard to get really engaged around the convention. It seemed the country’s leaders were offstage or running out of gas just when we needed them the most. The two candidates of hope were gone or fading. Bobby Kennedy had just been assassinated, and after that, Gene McCarthy seemed to have lost heart and energy.  We were left with Hubert Humphrey, the VP of a president that by this time was so reviled and exhausted he gave up and didn’t even try running for another term—and Nixon. I was too young to vote, but I knew that whatever happened, it would be my age group the next administration would be putting on the line.

Meanwhile the Vietnam War was Raging

There’s a lot of coverage that will be coming out today, talking about the specifics of what happened here in Chicago during that time, and why. There’s already been pretty heavy examination. The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern just finished a remarkable series on “The Media Legacy of Chicago ’68,” that reminded us that this is where the phrase “The Whole World Is Watching” began. The convention was also the first instance of politicians claiming what we now call “fake news” and vilifying the media. It was the event that caused police to be trained ever after in crowd control and, significantly, it was the first time raw footage went right to broadcast: No editing, no editorializing—YOU WERE THERE. Twenty seconds of film of cops jumping out of a paddy wagon and clubs doing what they shouldn’t be doing, and more and more after that. We’d see worse soon enough at Kent State. But this was first. This got the attention of the world. This was a police state in Chicago: Vietnam on Michigan Avenue.

We Were Already Pretty Spooked

By the time of the convention, we were in the eighth month of a year that every quarter had brought us a new horror—from the Tet Offensive to two assassinations. We weren’t numb yet; your faith that regular life would—had to—prevail was still pretty strong. You felt like if you just kept your head down... you could duck until it all settled back into rationality.

I’d just graduated from high school and made a bargain with myself to get the thing I most wanted—the future promised by a college education—but from the military, the entity that was involved in what was to become the greatest tragedy of my generation. A year later, the "deal" seemed almost Faustian to my teenaged self. But at the time I was trying to make it work. My induction ceremony had taken place only a few weeks earlier.

My mother had encouraged/pushed the move (it’s what she’d done), and she wasn’t broaching any second thoughts. Both my parents were vets from “The Good War” and couldn’t really see that you couldn’t say that about this war... until we saw the paddy wagon pull up.

I remember my mother covered her mouth with her hand and held it there, long after the clip played—this woman who had weathered twenty-hour surgery shifts in field hospitals on the front and the liberation of a prison camp.  We were both stunned, both grasping for a comment that would encompass the horror of the moment. When her hand came down, she couldn’t look at me—her gaze was still fixed on the screen. There was just a deep, long sigh. I joined her. We sighed and nodded. Words wouldn’t bridge the gap, but this did.

My Coming of Age

I think it happened in that moment, quick and profound. I spent the rest of the summer winnowing the piles of what I was planning to bring to my new dorm, from clothes to record albums. I fixated on those, for some reason. I knew the Beatles had to come with me, but I was going to college, maybe I should listen to more grown-up music—maybe it was time to give up childish things.

I chose a Johnny Mathis album, one of Sinatra’s, and gave The Association Greatest Hits to my ten-year-old brother.

Nothing actually changed between my mother and me, but when we argued in the future we were both aware we knew better. We were aware that way down deep we agreed at least on this one fact—“my” war was nothing like “her” war.

Eventually, I gave up my military scholarship and took back my Association album. My brother called me an Indian-giver, and I bought him a new one. We both still have them.

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Cover Reveal: First Peek at the Final Book, Counting Down to September 18 Pub Date

I’m quite excited to introduce the cover design for The Fourteenth of September, the novel I’ve worked on for so many years. I have to admit, it’s pretty thrilling to see it come to life, and I AM palpitating more than a bit…

I must say, the journey to this final cover has been a surprisingly challenging process. I probably should have known this, coming out of over 25 years in marketing. Looking back, when the cover is done it seems so obvious, like the title. However, after years of wrestling this complex story into a narrative, and naming it (thank you, Gary Wilson), and now again having to digest it all into a single image with the power to instantly engage the reader who would most love, enjoy, and relate to it? Well, that clearly required a specific eye and expertise far different from anything I’d done before. 

I knew the cover design would belong in the bailiwick of the publisher. And yet, I kept trying to envision it. I pestered early readers and designer friends about what they thought. I was both excited and full of trepidation as I handed over this book, my baby, with a leap of faith that the publisher would find the perfect image. I soon found myself, irony of ironies after all those agency years, as …the CLIENT… of those who knew far more than I about the type and images that are most alluring, that will still pop in thumbprint size in Amazon. In short, who knew way more than I could imagine. I was happy to defer. My publisher, She Writes Press, began work in November.

BACKGROUND ONLY. THEN: AUTHOR, GET OUT OF THE WAY

Fortunately, rather than have to figure it out myself, I was asked only to share my thoughts and any preliminary ideas I may have had. Fun as this was, it also underlined how formidable the task. I soon realized that, just like with the manuscript, it would be so easy to tip the balance and make this look like fan fiction for a Peter Fonda movie or, worse, a full-out Full Metal Jacket/Apocalypse Now story of men at war in-country, instead of a woman’s story, on campus. The cover needed the gravitas and familiarity of recognizable Vietnam imagery, but not the male combat or psychedelic ’60s assumption.

I was worried about the crowded field of iconography: helicopters, soldiers in a jungle with rifles. All very masculine and, to tell the truth, overdone. I struggled to make a list of what to eliminate for consideration: imagery that was hackneyed (a peace sign? please), just as I wrestled in the manuscript with dialogue for my characters. I couldn’t have everyone say “Hey, man,” even though in real life they actually did. And not everyone could have a musical name, like my protagonist, “Judy Blue Eyes,” but some could. Above all, we had to steer clear of the ’60s flower-power, fat Peter Max lettering. The war was not a “happening.” Balance was key, or there was danger the cover could send a completely wrong message about the actual subject of the book.

An Idea in Vogue

In December, based upon the roughest hint of a thought from me about flowers in a National Guard gun, the crack design team at She Writes Press was inspired by, of all things, a 1945 issue of Vogue magazine that ran on V-E Day with a beautiful, impressionistic illustration of pastel flowers seeming to grow out of the bayonet of a rifle. I was immediately taken by the surprisingly feminine image of war and felt it perfectly depicted the woman's point-of-view message of my story.

They added the period-specific typography used on a draft card circa the 1969 timing of the novel, and creatively stacked the words “September,” “Fourteenth,” and “Dragonette,” all with virtually the same number of letters, as if I’d chosen them intentionally for that purpose. There was some concern that the “feel” was too ’40s, and we experimented through January and early February with more era-specific images, but the impressionistic illustration won out. Women have always been a vital part of any war. This cover would work. The design was approved and final art was underway. I had a terrific story idea to pitch to Vogue lined up, merchandising ideas identified, and, significantly, we had time to spare in the publishing cycle.

Love and Ruin

GREG samata, eighth-grade boyfriend

I was totally in love with my cover. But then, to show that the road to great ideas is rocky, indeed, though the image was on a site offering it as available for licensing, it required an unanticipated “extra” layer of approval from the estate of the original artist. Though that illustration had been commissioned originally by a newsstand magazine, the estate felt that its use on the cover of a book for sale, was too “commercial.” (I can't even show it here). At the eleventh hour, permission was denied and we were back to square one, but worse…by now it was March, and we were facing an immediate deadline to get advanced review copies published in time to ensure critical reviews and long-lead publicity.

A collaboration began where both She Writes and I scrambled to tap our resources. Though my luck was running badly, my life remained charmed in at least one key area. My eighth-grade boyfriend (true story), Greg Samata, is a world-class graphic designer. When I went to him for advice, over tomato soup at Beatrix, he vaporized my stress and told me (as he did with my website) that he would handle it, not to worry. The publisher agreed.

PAUL sahre, illustrator

Greg called his friend, renowned illustrator Paul Sahre, to render the original idea into a ’60s-specific depiction and add his genius. The She Writes design team then took over to incorporate it beautifully into their original, elegant design and add mysterious but wonderful finishing touches to ensure optimum reproduction in any medium, as well as made room to include a wonderful blurb from best-selling author Jacquelyn Mitchard. Finally, She Writes held the presses, and we were able to include quotes from late-breaking Kirkus and Foreword Clarion reviews, along with additional blurbs from authors Peter Golden and Barbara Shoup, to polish off the back cover. Within two weeks we were back in business and on deadline, if under the wire. My great thanks to the entire expanded team. My nerves have yet to completely settle, but I’m in love again.

Better Than Vogue

Despite my affection for the original illustration, I must say the final cover is better. It’s a beautiful and provocative image of the feminine flowers of peace growing out of the hard metal of war, the conflict of Judy’s coming-of-conscience decision that will define her for the rest of her life. I’ll be curious to hear what you think.

Available Now for Pre-Order

The novel is now available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, and Apple iBooks for delivery on the publication date of September 18.

To celebrate the launch of the book, there will be a series of events in Chicago and New York. If you’re in either of these cities, save-the-date invitations are forthcoming, and I hope you’ll join me in person and get the book at one of the parties so I can sign it for you. Or, pre-order and bring it with you. I’d love to celebrate with you live.

If you’re elsewhere, I’d encourage you to order as early as possible. All pre-orders will be recorded on the drop date of September 18, and the more I have, the higher my “best of" numbers will be on the various sites—and the greater will be the interest in publishing my next book (yes, there is one, more on that later.) This way you’ll all be both enjoying the book (fingers crossed) and supporting my new writing career.

Thanks for being with me on this journey. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.

Lovely, Rita*

*Even better than Judy Blue Eyes

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