At this point, what I did: I learned how to do things. I had experiences. Some sad. Some pure glory.

…and future plans.

I canned, baked, cooked, grew herbs, planted flowers; painted walls, laid flooring, set tile, stripped shelves, varnished wood, arranged rooms; wove, sewed clothing and quilts, stitched, darned, knit, crocheted; waited; taught adults and children art and writing and literature, wrote curriculum, designed programs, assigned work I always did myself; prepared holiday meals and invited friends for dinner; substituted in kindergarten through high school classrooms in all subjects; walked, ran, bellydanced; earned four college degrees, four scholarships, several grants, and few prizes; sold fast food and books and baked goods and fabric in others’ stores; participated in art fairs and shows and had work in museums and galleries; wrote grant applications and reviewed them; attended workshops including The Flight of the Mind (five years); played guitar and zither; sang; collected art and beaded bags; stashed fabric and yarn and books for later; read; wrote six novels and enough stories and nonfiction and poetry for more books; submitted to journals and presses and agents; gave work away; published nonfiction and memoir and poetry and fiction; cut my own hair; planed raw timber and built things of beautiful hardwoods; enameled copper and silver, wove chain, forged and soldered and chased sterling and worked gold; changed tires and headlights and light switches; stuck to a budget and didn’t stick; I pierced my ears and gave up on mascara; saved money and people; learned to swim; showed dogs in two countries; judged field trials for sighthounds in the same two countries; served on nonprofit Boards; designed logos; drew for an architect; designed remodels and houses that were built and houses that were never built; worked with contractors and editors and clients; read novels and history and poetry and short stories and memoir and science and nonfiction; gathered feathers and shells and stones shaped like hearts; held hands and learned to love; wrote letters and reviews and praise; laundered and cleaned and scrubbed sinks and floors; taught art and literature and design and computer skills; advised a literary magazine and yearbook for twelve years; walked in the middle of the night as a teen and later crossed urban campuses in the dark; traveled by car, plane, bus, taxi, boat; visited cities; drove across country with my grandfather’s third wife; visited sheep range and a hog farm; was mooed in thecae; coached cross-country; watched others do wonderful things; stayed late in the high school library so students could use the computers; wrote letters of recommendation; blogged and emailed and typed out letters to friends; squandered my talent; accepted blame; let go of Facebook and joined Goodreads; gained and lost weight, gained and lost, gained and lost; read the news and commented; learned to use computers, both Mac and Windows; completed 5k runs and the Hood to Coast Relay five times and a half marathon once on 10/10/2010 and the 10k Bridge Crossing three times and ran all the way to work, over 15 miles; had my tonsils out at 14; had my appendix out in my 60s; damaged my feet; owned mistakes; struggled to remember names; bought two homes and inherited one; thanked people; forgot too often. I cried and laughed and tried to listen more than I talked; considered my better angels and sometimes did the courageous thing; hoarded regret and remorse; tried to do better; and failed sometimes. I birthed and raised two sons; became a grandmother three times; cleared four homes after the deaths of people I loved; grieved; dated foolishly and married wisely and remained faithful. I read and made and heard and learned and spoke up.

Always something new. Always letting something go.

Most writers are in love with whatever they are currently writing. They will insist it is the best and most important story (or novel or poem) they have ever written, even when that clearly is not the case.

I know all this, but I still believe and insist that All the Daughters Sing is the best I have to offer the world. I have written five novels before, and each had something to teach me, some valuable lesson I have tried to learn and use. Love Interest, Clean Away, A Single Fact, Living in Snake Land (my MFA thesis, renamed), The Promised Hour, and All the Daughters Sing. Six novels total, not five. Six. Personal experience informed the first and afterward; irony and voice in the second; incorporating many voices was key in the third; characters nothing like myself in the fourth; expanding a short story to figure it out in the fifth. This most recent novel, my sixth, uses all that hard-earned knowledge. Most notable is that I had already written an entire novel in eight voices, and I needed to experience doing that in order to write Daughters.

University of Washington grad student Gena awakes after illness to silence and the stink of death. Her partner, mother, all of humanity, and every other mammal, bird, reptile, fish, and amphibian in the world is dead. Decades later, she thinks she has solitary survival figured out when she begins birthing in an overwhelming blast of literal orgasm. Every spring a new daughter barely resembles Gena but is very like her older sisters. Other survivors across Earth have Daughters who look exactly like Gena’s. Each woman has her own story told in an overlapping timeline: US southerner Tula crosses continents; Welsh Delia considers a beetle as pet; Korean Yun is twelve and grows up alone; Brazilian Chava declares, “We are all daughters.” And all the Daughters sing.

—All the Daughters Sing

I only learn by doing. I began this novel by asking myself questions. I usually do.

Years ago, my friend Rebecca Olson observed that my stories often included birds. What would happen in the world if all birds were gone? I considered Silent Spring. I first intended this novel as a short story exploring catastrophic loss of bird species. I imagined a mother trying to explain to children what birds had once been like in the world. I wrote that brief scene. I did my research and discovered that birds have been vanished from a land and my question has an scientific answer. Then I thought harder: What if everything were gone, at least all vertebrates, every mammal, fish, bird, reptile, and amphibian? Eight billion human beings reduced to a single survivor. What if humanity continued in an entirely new form? What would identify those new people as human?

This led to a long answer to my simple question: How might the world survive with us still in it? What is lost; what gained?

And that is the genesis of All the Daughters Sing. It began as a short story completed January of 2018, became most of a novel in the same year during NaNoWriMo, and then was cut and grew to a much-revised novella. I cut further back to the short story again this past winter and saw it published online.

During this writing and revision, the story had several titles along the way, many cuts and deletions (tens of thousands of words), and a great deal of thought. But when I finally found courage to reopen the long version from five years before, I was ready this spring. More cuts, more revision, more revisioning. Obsessive work. A walk and then bent over my computer sometimes for twelve hours. I found files about characters I had forgotten I’d written! I discovered research on aging and parthenogenesis and birth that reinforced the science in my story. I revised. I read the entire novel aloud. I made my husband cry.

I still need a reader for my Korean character, but a Muslim reader was a great help and so was the Welsh reader, who each corrected and reassured me where I was on track.

I prepared a file of material necessary for submission of a novel: four versions of biography, pitches from one sentence to a paragraph in length, list of comparables, explanation of purpose, intended audience, one-page synopsis including spoilers, query letters. I revised every timeI opened the file. I research presses and agents. I submitted, just to a handful of presses and agents at first.

To date, one agent and two presses have asked for the full manuscript. It will be months before I can complete the submission process (many presses will open to submissions over the next six months). Small presses respond only after many months, not days or weeks. Agents sometimes do not repond at all. I likely have a year of waiting before me.

Next month, another NaNo month, I will work on something different. The artificial deadline and record online will keep me focused while I wait. I am ready for that, having recently written a brand new story, “The Last of the Honey.” I have a document of nineteen short stories almost ready for submission as a collection with fourteen of them previously published (this is a good thing). I will work on that, too.

In the mean time, keep fingers crossed for the novel, All the Daughters Sing. The best and most important thing I will ever write. I’m certain of that.