Guest Blogger Linda Simoni-Wastila

 photo by Will Simoni-Wastila

The phrase "I'm writing a novel" means nothing to me. Tell me you've written one, even if it remains unpublished, even if you're not happy with it, and now you've said something. Linda Simoni-Wastila has written one and is zeroing in on the close of a second. Always intrigued by the creative process, I took particular notice when I found out that Linda only began writing fiction a few years ago. I asked her a few questions about that, and about her character Ben, and was further intrigued to learn of certain parallels to my own experience (I began writing narrative fiction at about the same time as Linda, my character - of the opposite sex - also came to me in a mysterious manner, and she also wrote poems) - but with this crucial difference: Linda, like Laura Eno, is finishing her novels. Linda and Laura both profoundly inspire me. Aware that I am not alone in wanting to know more about Linda's novels - Brighter than Bright and Pure - I asked her to give us a synopsis of each one. You will notice that Ben's last name changes from the first to the second story. Linda explained why Ben switches to his mother's maiden name: "When he finds out his 'dad' is not really his 'dad', and then gets shot by said 'dad', he changes his name. Part of his quest in PURE is to find out his heritage." Following the synopses is Linda's account of how Ben came to be.

BTB

Logline: Brighter than Bright explores the clashing worlds of the restive heart and the unquiet mind as two Harvard students discover the fragility of human relationship and the awakening of self in the shadow of incurable mental illness.

Brilliant but bipolar, scientist-in-training Benjamin Michael Taylor wants nothing more than to be normal. Even as he struggles with his mood disorder, the scars of a messy adolescence, and complicated family bonds, he tries building a relationship with Phoebe Miller, a lonely medical student coping with her own losses. But rather than disclose his secrets to his girlfriend, he chronicles his demons in journals and poetry. Mounting academic pressures, burgeoning debt, and medication slip-ups stress the relationship, and Phoebe abruptly ends the affair.

In the wake of their breakup, she struggles to understand her instincts in matters of the heart while he stokes his growing mania with drugs and reckless sex. When his mother’s sudden stroke forces him home, long-simmering family tensions erupt and a brutal confrontation with the man he thought was his father lands him in a psychiatric hospital, exploding his fantasy of living an ordinary life. Suicidal, he faces a dilemma: trust Phoebe and medicine to help him navigate his many problems, or continue to wallow in melancholic madness that can only end in tragedy.

**

PURE

When crises of the heart and mind challenge the integrity of three ambitious academics, their lives careen down tangled paths to betrayal, loss, and for some, redemption. PURE is a 100,000 word upmarket novel that uses alternating viewpoints to explore the ethical quandaries rife in ivory tower medical research.

Young neuroscientist Ben Carandini discovers his experimental mice dead in a self-inflicted massacre during a safety trial of JM25, a bipolar compound set to launch in humans, and suffers a moral dilemma - collude in the cover-up or blow the whistle. Either decision jeopardizes everything he’s worked for, including his own cure. Wooed by Johns Hopkins, Ben and the rest of his Harvard team relocate to Baltimore where he reacquaints with Kevin Sullivan, a successful anesthesiologist who appears to lead the normal life Ben desires. Beleaguered by debt and his repressed bisexuality, Kevin diverts prescription narcotics to ease his financial and personal pain. Phoebe Miller, Kevin’s idealistic fiancée, remains oblivious to his vices as she struggles to balance her medical practice with caring for her demented father. Exhilaration over her budding pregnancy turns to regret when Ben, her former lover, reenters the picture, rekindling unresolved feelings in both of them. When Phoebe’s father disappears from his care facility, Kevin’s drug use results in a patient’s death, and one of Ben’s clinical trial patients bludgeons her child, they react in ways that alter their lives forever.

Birthing Ben
by Linda Simoni-Wastila

Not too long ago, Mark and I had a sidebar conversation about the genesis of our stories and characters. After relating how my writing began with an insistent character demanding creation, he graciously asked me my story at The Bricoleur. Since there is nothing I enjoy more than talking about writing (other than writing itself), I agreed to tell the story of how Ben, my oldest literary child, came to inhabit my mind and my heart, and launched me on a journey I never imagined.

As a hormone-tortured teenager, I wrote – a lot. Journals, poems, short stories, letters. Once everything settled out in college, I only wrote papers for classes and then, later, in graduate school, theses and dissertations about medication safety and regulatory policy. My academic career mandated I churn out such papers, but the other side of my brain kept niggling for fulfillment. I delved into clay, glass, and silver.

Fast-forward twenty-something years. In 2005, I had no intention of writing a novel. Indeed, I had no intention of writing anything beyond the half-dozen or so peer-reviewed science manuscripts I needed for promotion and tenure. But over the long Thanksgiving weekend, while cleaning out an old laptop directory, I found a file called ‘benmich’:

For as long as he could remember, life always seemed a little too bright at times and, at others, a little too dark. Never “just right” or average. This disturbed him at first but, after awhile, he began to think that such extremes were normal. As a young boy, he was quiet and introverted and didn’t play with other children his age. A sad story, a dead frog, a spilled ice cream, would set him off crying. “Oh, that’s just Ben, such a sensitive boy” his mother would explain to questioning expressions. But later, when he was older and more defiant, explanations from his mother were not forthcoming. His father just called him a delinquent and miscreant; his mother just hid behind her volunteer activities and charity events and, in her rare spare moments, her studio, where she would paint flowery, peaceful pictures of what might be, should be, but never of what was.

I’d forgotten that half-page of notes, written nine months earlier one morning, worried about someone I didn’t know from life or dreams. “Who is Benjamin Michael,” I remember asking my husband, “and why is he in trouble?”

After I re-read these words, the story tumbled out. In my head. I could not let go of Ben. In the chaos known as the Christmas Season I imagined a story chronicling the adventures of Ben, a brilliant but bipolar neuroscience student committed to finding his cure, and his true love, Phoebe, a compassionate medical student who wished for nothing more than to alleviate the pain of others.

I never considered writing down the words that month. Instead, I dreamt about Ben, fleshed him out in my head, built up his friends and family – Izzy, Sam, Bruce the shrink, Althea, his father – and they all seemed real to me. Too real. I didn’t mention my obsession to others, afraid I was losing my grip. For all this occurred under a time of tremendous personal and professional stress. A friend noted, “You seem like an animal caged.” I remember laughing, but thinking, yes, I am. I want more. I need more. But what?

I described my ‘problem’ to another friend, a creative. She smiled and said, “Write it down. Get it out of your system.”

On January 2, 2006, after committing the previous day to a new annual regimen that included yoga, walking daily, continued work in precious metal silver, clay, and giving up desserts, I began to write Ben:

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt different, been different. Yeah, I’ve always been smart, very smart, uh, maybe too smart. It certainly didn’t endear me to my peers when I was younger, that’s for sure. I didn’t particularly care though, they were pretty much rich, spoiled jerks, assholes as they got older. But, I digress…. by different I don’t mean just being smart; I felt things differently, too.” I pause, considering where to go next. “I still feel things differently, intensely, more than most. Life always seems a little too bright at times and, at others, a little too dark…”

I can only describe the process of writing the first draft of BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT as a manic rush. For four months I churned out words, approximately 5,000 a day, subsisting on air and three hours of sleep a night. In writing BTB, I was a mere medium of the story. Words dripped from my fingertips, to the keyboard, and formed themselves on the screen. Writing that first draft was effortless. I wrote fast, afraid I would lose the story, lose Ben, that he would evaporate as he came -- without warning.

I wrote. I worried I was, like Ben, going mad. I researched his condition and took countless ‘do you have bipolar disorder?’ self-tests; I recognized in myself the symptoms of boundless joy. For I’ve never been so consumed, so driven, nor extracted so much pleasure, for such a protracted period of time. Four months of bliss, four months of a hypomanic, rushed thrill which spilled over into every corner of my life. By April’s end, I had a completed manuscript of 183,000 words.

I crashed. But BTB was out. The next three years I revised, hacking and building up around my armature of a story. The manic rush returns occasionally, but for shorter, less frequent bouts. When it sneaks on me, I feel complete, immortal, secure. I am in flow. Although writing PURE is a completely different experience – almost analytical, measured, less passionate – the writing is far superior to the early, passion-fueled BTB drafts.

Readers ask how I get into the male psyche so well. I really don’t know other than to say while writing Ben, I AM Ben, he is in me, my bones, my blood. This magical becoming occurs not only while at the computer, but all the day and night. Ben’s scenes become my life, harrowing when he is high or suicidal, peaceful when he’s maniacal. I feel his moods acutely.

I’ve written Ben for nearly four and a half years. Along with my flesh-and-blood Will and Lea, Ben is my creation. He is the reason I write, and I am grateful to him for providing this gift, this community, this avocation and passion when I needed it most. But I feel him maturing, becoming more independent, crowded out by other characters – Kevin, Jeremy, Clayton, Ariane, Liam, Zeke. PURE approaches its close.  I will cry when I type “The End” because Ben will be all grown.


Visit Linda's website and read more excerpts from Brighter than Bright and Pure.