A "body of work"

A few days ago, I reached 20k+ words in my third novel. It concerns two Latvian-Americans violinists who haven't seen each other in ten years reuniting in Riga. Once I started, I dug through all the photos of my most recent trip there to find inspiration.

This is now the third time I've done this.

Three weeks ago, I wrapped up the first draft of my second novel. Looking across these two pieces, as well as my first novel, it occurred to me that I suddenly had a "body of work."

I've gone through all three of my pieces to find sources of commonality and friction as I start to develop my voice. If I had to narrow it all to one sentence, I think it would be, "I write internationally minded literary love stories about identity, language, and becoming."

But if I had to take a few steps outside of that, I would say I actually write "Upmarket literary fiction about diaspora, belonging, and the relationships that shape identity across borders." Because while my first novel is a cut and dry love story, the second and now the third are also making space for other types of relationships: friendships, familial ties etc.

This has been a truly fun exercise, particularly because there is a large space between my first and second novel, tonally. The first novel is wry but spare, cool--reflecting two POV characters who are reserved and guarded.

The second is warm, open, overflowing with ideas, reflecting two POV characters who are deeply literary and philosophical.

Now the third is shaping up to be sensual and acerbic.

But what are the common threads?

Stylistically, I found I tend to use restrained descriptive language that lives a lot in the BODY; pick similes reaching for household objects; focus on narrators who categorize the people around them with shorthand; and I’m attracted to structures that play with chronology and build novels partly out of found documents: notebooks, scorecards, interview transcripts, index cards, poems, textbooks.

All three of my novels concern the following, in a tonal range. I'd describe it as taking different colored crayons out of the same box:

transnational identities

communities / found family

language

cultural inheritance / diaspora

memory / childhood

belonging / people trying to figure out what home means

I also noticed something interesting about all six of my main characters. The women in my books are allowed access to anger and the men are allowed access to tenderness. They tend to be more open and emotionally available, while the women are more guarded. However, again, they're still all different crayons out of the same box.

So the male main character of novel one is earnest and gentle

Of novel two is cheerful and accepting

Of novel three is wildly romantic and honest

These are three different ways to express "openness," while the women are three different ways to express a door that's barely ajar.

It's been such a fun exercise, but it's also wild to consider I have"body of work" to review after only eight months of writing.

Now back to Riga.