As 2023 was drawing to a close, a small group of writers I adore began imagining how we might begin the next year. I proposed that we try writing a letter to our projects and, after it was agreed on all around as a solid idea, I promptly decided not to. I thought I would maybe do it, and then escaped the children in order to get down these words just a few hours ahead of our online gathering. It’s no wonder I am resisting. It seems at this point in the process all there is is resistance. And yet, I found that I did have a something to say to the fledgling novel inside of me after all, or at least to the characters themselves.
To R., M., & T.—
My daughter would like to know how a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly. “Like exactly how,” she says, “I want to watch it happen.” We learn that, until recently, scientists could only perceive the transformation by slitting the chrysalis open at various stages of the metamorphosis and recording their findings. To know how it is done is an end to its becoming.
Lately, though, microCT scanners have been employed to watch the process unfold in real time. The scans are rendered into 3D imagery which we watch, our heads bent toward one another, on time lapse video. There is no magic in it at all. The images, though factual, contribute nothing to our understanding.
To make a single pound of silk, the next suggested video tells us, requires the cocoons of two thousand silk worms. The domestic silk moth has been bred for millennia to grow wings that cannot fly. It is not beautiful. As silkworm larvae grow and prepare to transform, they enclose themselves in a cocoon using a single silk thread up to 1,000 feet long. At this point, the shapeshifters are boiled to death and gently shaken free from their precious domains so that the silk fiber can be loosened and unwound, twirled with other strands to produce one thread of silk.
What I am trying to tell you is that I do not know the way through this novel, and after all these years I am still not certain of the direction. I set out tentatively, gain a little ground, and then make camp, busying myself with domestic work and forgetting altogether that I am exploring the unknown. Every so often I look about me and remember I am supposed to feel this longing to reach the end, or at least the next stage of this book journey, and so I pull out my maps or simply set off, making steady pace and finding fresh scenery until, again, I am waylaid.
It is discouraging work, this first novel. I want to know how the transformation happens, but I am the container in which it is mixing and reshaping. I want to see the finished product, but it is being spun from my mind at this very moment, and I will not be shaken free too soon.
I have to wait. To move at a walking pace. I wonder whether you feel impatient for me to reach you, but you are not yet there to reach. These metaphors respond to two confidences my spirit has been given about this work. Writing this book is not about what becomes of the book, when it will emerge, or how it will be received. Writing this book is about the story being written in my life. And: It will happen. The latest addendum is: Soon, actually. It will happen soon.
To which I respond: But how?
Like the silk thread winding round, like the wings breaking free from their casing, like the breath refilling my body. A mystery.
That is how.
Releasing myself to the process,
—Adrienne
Adrienne. Adrienne! If your novel is even 10% as magically woven as this letter, it will be a gift to us all, but hopefully most importantly to yourself. There are a hundred little moments here I am taking for my own. Soon, friend.
This is beautiful, Adrienne!! 💛💛