The LAVENDER HOUR was published a week ago. In the past I have been at home when a book came out, caught up in a flurry of launch parties, interviews, extensive book tours, store signings and celebratory dinners with family and friends.
This year on the publication date I was in Virginia.
I am in residence at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts on a writing fellowship. At first it felt odd to be here and not out promoting the book. I received no flowers or emails from my publisher as I had in the past, no phone calls from friends. In the isolation that a place like this provides, I could almost forget it had been published.
And then it seemed that being here is the perfect and right thing.
It is true that there is satisfaction in holding a published novel in one’s hands. In seeing it on the shelves. All that work. All those hours spent riding the impermanence of emotions: doubt, fear, delight. Of course, it is thrilling. Ours is, after all, a result-oriented culture. We think that when we marry the right partner, land the job, lose ten pounds, get published, life will be ever after the magic carpet ride. We tend to think the point is publication. In the flurry of success, we can forget that eventually the book will disappear from the store shelves and that the most profound and long-lasting joy lies in the creating.
Gardeners know the immediate and sensual pleasure of a tomato perfectly ripe and still warm in the hand from the sun’s heat. But the soul satisfaction comes from tending the plant, the time spent with hands deep in the earth.
Here I am one of twenty other artists who understand that it is not the product but the process from which we derive the most intense satisfaction.
As I write this, a poet is at work in the next studio and a novelist in the one beyond that. Across the courtyard a composer is working on a song cycle. A photographer from New York is printing in the dark room. There are two children’s books authors here, a sculptor, a visual artist who paints dream-like figures, a second who draws birds nests, and a third who paints clouds against the Blue Ridge Mountains. There is a Chinese-American writer working on a memoir about her trip to Tibet. An artist from Africa is burning wood and cutting bamboo from which he is making a drum. It will “talk” he promises us. We are a mixed group. Some of us are established, even famous. Others of us are unknown. Emerging artists.
Last night after dinner an artist presented slides of her work. As she clicked through the carousel, she quoted the words of a painter who had mentored her long ago. “If there isn’t passion there, don’t do it.” Everyone in the room nodded. There was no talk of sales figures or reviews, or best-seller lists. Only the work.
My new book is out.
I am in Virginia, surrounded by my tribe and celebrating life the best way we know how.
Creating.