Torn Between Two Lovers: A Tragicomic Tale of Second-Novel Rivalry 💔

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My first love, a thirteen-year affair, caused a lot of emotion over its long life—excitement, rage, fear, euphoria, satisfaction, frustration. It was both thrilling and exasperating and, truth be told, there were a few breakups, one I thought would be irrevocable. Friends were concerned we wouldn’t make it, calling it my phantom novel. But we went the distance and finally celebrated going public nine months ago. Since then it’s been a party, all champagne and celebration. A victory lap full of hard work, yes, but mostly pure joy.

One of the names I call the object of my affection is The Fourteenth of September. When I’m in a rush, I use its pet name, “A Woman’s Story of Vietnam,” sometimes just a short but sweet “Set in ’69.” We’ve had our moments. Never will a relationship be so volatile, meaningful, or memorable, and it will always be with me.

But I’m ready, as they say, to move on. It’s me, not it. No fault, harm, or foul. It’s just time.

I confess I’ve been flirting for about a year with a tall, dark, and handsome story with a foreign accent—about expats in San Miguel de Allende searching for their last dream. I admit I love rolling my tongue around its working title, “La Querencia,” and intriguing the curious with its definition: “The place in the ring where the bull feels safe.” The intrigue. I want to dance! In March, we slipped away together for a delicious month at the Ragdale Artist’s Retreat where we fantasized about our future in a ninety-page plot plan. It’s fresh, it’s sexy. It could work. But we have to commit.

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And yet, The Fourteenth of September won’t let me go. And part of me—and I confess this is a surprise—doesn’t want it to. It’s done well for a debut novel by an unknown, already in a second printing, in fact. But it’s so needy. So many months since launch and it still takes up 75 percent of my time. My juicy next novel beckons, and if I pause for even a moment to look over my shoulder and give it an encouraging wink, promising I’ll come soon, sales of the first just stop. It’s fond of these foot-stomping tantrums for attention. I will not be ignored, Rita!

I admit, sometimes I rather like the rivalry, if I can say that out loud—as I type this and have just moved the stacks of San Miguel research out of view. Each week I have opportunities to talk about the attractions of Lover #1, now fully wrestled to the ground and lovely. We’ve been through so much. I enjoy telling the tale: how my personal experiences became integrated into the story of an important historical time, the characters I both offed and paired off, the “soundtrack” I peppered throughout the action, the journey I renamed from “coming of age” to “coming of conscience.” It may be rough around a few edges, but it was my first love, a dream come true, and I relish sharing it. It still has a long runway, with the 50th anniversary of so many of the events it recounts upon us. And I owe it. I’m a different writer than before we met: better, wiser. Without it, what would I be? I don’t think I can give it up yet.

It’s just not a good time, I keep telling Lover #2, but realistically how long can I ask it to wait? The thought of it is so wonderful when I’m dreaming of how the plot will spin, but exhausting when I buckle down into the daylight of bringing it to life. I remember how much #1 took out of me, and my knees start to wobble. I sweat. Give me at least half your time, #2 demands, or I’m outta here. And, in fact, the details of some of the squishy parts of the plot plan have come to seem insurmountable. We’re no longer dancing. I already miss our early days: the spark, the promise. The certainty that this affair would be so much better, so much smoother, so much more. . . efficient.

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I’m at a crossroads. My publicist sends intoxicating Friday afternoon emails about major media that have requested review copies of #1, potential placements that are targeted for as long away as December, as far into the future as next spring. How long can I sustain this affair, I wonder? At the same time, book club members and other readers clamor for news of an arrival date for #2, when I’m not even sure how serious we are. My hairdresser tears up when I tell her about the bullring. Can I balance both? Must I walk away from one of them, shutting the door, drawing the line, refusing to answer the plot dreams that visit nightly about #2, or coldly let those unsold copies of #1 sit spurned in storage.

I need couples therapy. To sit them both down and duke it out. Who gets visitation on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and who gets the long, productive weekend mornings? The need for discipline and organization blasts at me through a subconscious voice of authority as I lie on the couch. “I know, I know,” I answer, as it regales me with stories of the unwavering work habits of Ernest Hemingway and Edith Wharton. 

I am weak. I am fickle.  I simply cannot live without them both, for now. A remedy will present itself, a favorite will emerge, I’m certain.

Well, isn’t it pretty to think so?

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Why I Write

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Photograph by Karen Thompson

Photograph by Karen Thompson

Throughout my career I’ve written for the trend, for the times, for the zeitgeist. I spent years in the public relations/marketing profession, where being current was currency, and built a reputation as someone known for “getting it.” So I was surprised when I encountered push back over the years as I wrote my first novel, set during the Vietnam War, as to why anyone would be interested in the subject matter. It’s over. It’s been done. Why should I care? I wasn’t around then. It’s irrelevant to me, to today.

Such comments always made me respond with a crack referencing the latest hit movie set during World War II, about a war that took place before most of us were “around,” and yet endlessly of interest, of relevance.

This millennial resistance to all but the immediate present has caused me to think a great deal about the notion of relevance. The concept seems obvious as I work on a second novel about the experiences of two women in Germany during the Great War, and how what they went through trickled down to profoundly harm their children, and children’s children. These influences may have begun yesterday but highly impact today and, as more children are born, without question, tomorrow. In fact, the point of the novel is to wonder how very long, into how many generations, the impact of war can last.

I think of relevance as I work on a memoir in essays about my own life that highly resists staying in the present, or even in my own past—it circles back, farther and farther, into the influences of those that influenced me.

My own present has many dimensions that began long ago. It’s hard not to feel it when my physical therapist helps me stretch out the impact of the gymnastics incident that threw out my back when I was sixteen; the car accident at thirty that messed up my neck, gave me a lifetime of migraines and threw me permanently out of alignment; and the mugging at forty-something that saved my purse but frayed my rotator cuff. Our bodies are like old cars, I believe, the injuries of our past dinging us with every morning wake up.

So too, are our minds and our memories. What else explains the need for so many therapists who help us deal with patterns, fears and behaviors that belonged to generations long ago and have been passed down, unwittingly, to influence and inhibit how we deal with achievement, relationships and what we in turn pass on ourselves?

With every throb of the little finger of my right hand that reacts when my back goes out or pang of head pain that comes with the low barometric pressure of summer storms, I go back to the source, and am reminded where this all started. 

I’ve always told my clients, in my most recent profession as a career consultant, to stop and reevaluate as they progressed. You’ve worked for twenty years, I’d say, thirty. What is the combined value of that experience, expertise and point of view? That’s what you are now. It’s what makes you unique and is the foundation of the legacy you leave for others. 

And so it is with history. We are informed way beyond the shortsightedness of the present.

Viet Thanh Nguyen was nominated for the National Book Award for Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War.  President Obama quoted William Faulkner about how “the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” The past, immediate or far, what happened to others, the country, the family, is all there when you crook your little finger. It’s what made it happen. It’s why it still happens. 

Physical, mental, familial, historical. We are the ancestry.com of our times and to continue to move forward there’s an imperative to connect the dots, to identify the patterns, to factor in everything, to acknowledge.

Nothing is irrelevant.

This is why I write.