When I was teaching high school English, I kept a Bible and the Qur’an on my shelves. I had the American stories collected by Erdoes and Ortiz. (Most of my books were free to borrow and generally came back, but that book and the side-by-side original Spanish and English translations of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda had to be replaced again and again.) I had many novels, books of poetry, collections of short stories, literary journals, nonfiction, science fiction, fantasy, realism, traditional and modern stories. I urged my students to be respectful of what is called “myth” because that word has become pejorative. Myths are most often the sacred stories of other cultures. Have respect.

My own book is not a myth, not sacred, magical, nonfiction, poetry, or even published. But it is done.

Yes, there will be further drafts, editing, revision, new words, passages cut, rewritten, moved. I may have crossed a line with Nadya’s or Amani’s story. Just for the next hours, let me say it is done. Just for today.

And if you or someone you know might be willing to help me make the story better, please let me know. [See below.]

I began the month of April planning to read what I had drafted five years before. (Remember when I claimed I’d written my science fiction novel more recently? When I reviewed my NaNo records, I stared at the “Projects” page, which listed my completed November 2018 NaNo novel of 70,662 words. I truly do not remember writing it that long ago. Not even now. I’ve sat and stared at the date. I recall being afraid to read it when it was done, and it seems I have been afraid to revise for more than four years.)

There are several point of view characters in the novel. I had expanded on only two of them. I had not only avoided revising this story, I knew I had avoided writing several of the characters. I thought I might write some of those missing voices in April this year. Or not. I was flexible in my goals. I would rearrange, cut pages from some of characters who had gone on too long, dig through my computer files for random passages and chapters from other viewpoints I meant to add, focus on consistency of point of view and verb tense, consider handwritten notes in various folders. I would create a single coherent document, so far as that was possible. I hoped to have eighty thousand words, a doubtful goal. If I finished in time, I thought I would print off the entire novel and read it aloud.

Today, I read the final chapter aloud to my husband… and he cried. [In a good way.]

Help, please. I need a Muslim to read four single-spaced pages.

I have done my research and my intentions are respectful, but I need someone of faith to tell me where I might have got something wrong. I don’t need a writer, just someone who knows. Gary thinks it would be wisest to cut those pages, but faith is human and necessary and my characters are all over the world. In truth, I could use readers from Korea, Nigeria, Wales, and a small-town Baptist from Georgia to read pages. Maybe someone from Peru.

The novel is a composite of two novellas and several short stories, a chart of characters, many drafts, drafts which sometimes conflicted and had to be reconciled to a single reality. I have devoted several hundred hours to completing this fourth draft. The second draft came together on screen, the third reformatted after printing it out and moving pieces around, the fourth read aloud from another print-off. My eyes fairly crackled most days during the past five weeks, and what you might call the real world sometimes faded, all misty and vague. My head aches. I dream this story. I read no novels other than my own throughout April. I woke before dawn and began working, sometimes at 3am. I wrote until it was light enough to go out. I came back from walking and running and I wrote. I have never worked this hard on anything I have written, not even during my MFA program, not ever. I am usually impatient and lazy and I send out work too quickly. I know better, I taught my students better. The discipline has been good. The determination to find the story I envisioned has driven me.

Like most writers, I want to believe my first draft is perfect. That is never true. Never. I am aging and have sometimes feared I would lose any ability I might once have possessed to write coherently. I have always forgotten names and this is worse now that I am old. I thought maybe I could not pull this together, but it seems I have underestimated my own powers of concentration. I worked hard. It is not the first time I have written a novel from the viewpoint of several women. In the nineties I eventually abandoned a manuscript about four generations of women. I had faith in the story but decided I did not have the skill to make it work the way I envisioned.

Perhaps I was too preoccupied with family and work in those years. Perhaps it was not skill I lacked but energy and attention. I have thought through this newer story for years, chipping away at bits and pieces. Dozens of drafts, rewrites, reimagining. I worry even so that I’ve done the work too fast.

After many drafts, I want to call the novel version of All the Daughters Sing “done” or “finished” or “complete”.

Dear Readers, the novel is not done. It might not even be complete. Nevertheless, today I insist on believing I have accomplished my goal. At over eighty thousand words this is the longest novel I have ever managed. (I have a document with another twelve thousand words I have cut from the book and saved, when I did not simply delete words, lines, passages, and entire pages. There is another related story written at some point in the past few years I will not even open to review because I know with certainty that it doesn’t belong in this book.)

I have stirred words, made a meal. I am sated for today. Thank you all.