On a cold but sunny day in March of 2015, the idea for a novel came to me. It arrived in an instant, a flash of bright light before my eyes. I felt intense happiness, followed by trepidation and mild terror. I was about to turn 29. I had a good life in Bern and anyway, what did I know about writing books? I had never written one. But it turned out that didn’t matter so much. In German, there’s this antiquated but beautiful phrase ‘mit etwas schwanger gehen’, which means being pregnant with something. Letting a project, or an idea, grow inside you. And there the novel was, growing. Ten months later, I boarded a plane to New Zealand to research and write the book as part of a PhD in Creative Writing. Almost three years later, in late 2018, I finished my dissertation and returned to Switzerland. The manuscript had earned me the PhD, but I knew it wasn’t yet ready to be published.

I’ll finish the book at some point, I thought. Maybe next year. I muddled through. I found a day job, then another. When the pandemic hit, I switched to writing poetry for a while. Fiction just seemed a bit too intense during those early lockdowns. After the worst of it was over, I began working on the book again on weekends and holidays. I wrote new scenes, deleted old ones and wondered what the point of it was.

A few years passed like that. There were countless months where I didn’t look at the manuscript at all. Still, the book claimed a constant spot in my psyche. The characters, and this mysterious dark story, followed me wherever I went.

I wanted to quit so many times. Perhaps the only thing that kept me going, apart from many supportive friends, long walks and the occasional dance party, was this irrefutable sense that if I did quit, a part of my soul would die and I’d live out the rest of my days somehow diminished, less alive. That prospect always scared me enough to return to the page.

The novel is finished now. I mean, as finished as I can make it. A professional editor will take care of the typos still lurking in those pages. It’s been eleven years since that fateful day in early spring. I never thought it would take this long. But then I remember this poem by Mary Oliver, pinned on the wall above my writing desk:

Things take the time they take. Don’t

worry.

How many roads did Saint Augustine follow

before he became Saint Augustine?

My novel is called Surrender because it tells the story of a military surrender at the end of the Second World War. But that one word also describes my entire experience of writing the book. I gave it most of my thirties, untold holidays, my savings, my pride, my need for certainty and control, my fear of not being good enough; I had to offer it all up and trust.

‘Writing a novel is kind of like scaling Mt Everest and passing by your own bones on the way,’ Karen Russell said. There was a moment about four years ago, when I realized I had to entirely gut the first half of the book. I was much too scared to attempt it for about a year and then I got to work, cursing as I typed. More rewriting followed. People kept asking whether I was ‘done’. Or how close I was to ‘done’. I have no idea, I replied. I have no idea at all. But over the last two years, the finish line started to come into view. I had seen my own bones so many times I knew I was nearing the end.

I know I make it sound like an ordeal. But when I look back, I see that this book, this story, never asked anything of me that I wasn’t capable of giving. I grew into the difficulties, and I also learned that not everything about writing has to be difficult. That second lesson is ongoing.

Writing is, without a doubt, bad for my posture and a danger to my social life but I am afraid I love it. I started another book now. I sincerely hope it won’t take eleven years to finish, but who knows. Things take the time they take.

Further Reading

My novel Surrender will be out sometime early next year, both as a paperback and an eBook, from Troubador Publishing UK. I’ll share more details soon. Navigating the thicket of book publishing is no joke but I’m so happy I chose to go indie, and do it myself (with a lot of expert help!).

The Karen Russell quote is from Matt Bell’s brilliant book Refuse to be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts (2022, Soho Press). I have only followed about half of his advice, but it made a world of difference to my messy manuscript.