At the annual astronaut Christmas party at the Hollett’s, I get asked about how the book is going. I am writing about my astronaut sister, Janice, and these are people who knew her. I don’t think I’m the only writer who feels defensive as a general state of being when asked about how the book is coming. Most writers carry an expectation around that unless the book is done, it should be coming along better. But also, even us writers, who should know better, tend to think of a book in terms of word count. And yet word count, lots of words, can have very little to do with how the book is actually coming along. If you have lost the direction your book should take, the words may accumulate, but they will not further your narrative. A lot of time the words that make up your writing draft are the tip of a sub-surface iceberg. Most of the process of writing a book can be invisible. A lot of it never shows up on the published page (mostly for the better in terms of the story of the book).

Here’s the journey that my writer’s process took me on this morning: I was looking up a recipe for a natural remedy for brain fog following a course of antibiotics. I came across a website (with blog and book) reporting on the disappearance of metastasized prostate cancer using molasses and baking soda to alkalinize the body. The website was published by a man named Vernon who blogged about all the information he got from a cesium treatment group on yahoo. (Cesium is another fairly famous alkalinizing treatment for cancer used by a doctor in Italy.) I also came across Dr. Huber’s website on using sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda, in alkalinizing the body to cure cancer. Dr. Huber’s clinic was the one Janice chose for her final treatments.

I had a scene I needed to write about meeting Dr. Huber. I hadn’t approached Dr. Huber’s information (and the scene) from this angle before. Looking for an alternative treatment for something quite mundane, I was looking at Dr. Huber’s website in the context of the alternative treatment community. Reading the principles for Dr. Huber’s clinic reminded me of the contrast in the principles with western medicine, which reminded me of why naturopathy would be so attractive to Janice. She much more strongly aligned with naturopathic principles, and she was a person who acted on her beliefs and values (in areas of more uncertainty than logical knowledge) more than most of us can imagine.

Janice was more aware of herself and knew herself more than anyone else I have ever met. You can imagine how this might have happened as she surpassed her classmates in school, received acknowledgement and accolades for breaking the mold, and attended a university (Purdue) that bent over backwards to customize their curriculum to speed her on her way. Plus she was raised in a Unitarian family known for its independent thinking and strong-minded women.

So working with this information, I developed some text on the two different perspectives: western medicine and the alternative path and the different principles of each. The naturopathic path, I called, “A Different Path.” At the end of the day today, that has solidified in my mind as the thread of the book covering Janice’s “different path” with cancer (with implications for her “different path” to becoming an astronaut). There are two different logical systems involved when traveling the naturopathic versus the western medical paths. Two different ways of looking at the world, different lexicons, different languaging about cancer. They both have their validity. I hope to show that.

There were two other pieces that, in combination with the Internet search this morning, contributed to solidifying this thinking about Janice’s different paths. At a second astronaut party later in the evening, I was introduced to an astronaut who told me that his wife had had DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ) at the same time as Janice’s breast cancer. I was told they did their best to lay out the case to Janice for doing “conventional” (radiation and chemotherapy) treatment. (The implication being that they had tried to save her.) “But it was clear her mind was made up.” Another exasperated expression of what I have heard so often: “She had to do it her own way.” With the implied, “And look where her stubbornness got her.” It was this–what people would do with her decision–that Janice feared most. I have felt a dangerously compelling need to answer this.

The other trigger was a writing prompt in my Masters of Nonfiction course I’m taking at Johns Hopkins University. The prompt: to write a couple paragraphs using the narrative techniques we had been studying that included a mystery, a symbol, something that could mean different things to different people, and something I didn’t understand. Interesting challenge. Which perfectly fit what I was up against in writing the scene about the last Christmas with Janice. The prompt gave me an idea for an approach to the scene that was kind of a fun challenge. And I ended up conveying the movement of the scene within a concept of Janice’s alternative path colliding with Mom and Dad’s conventional path: Janice reasserting her path, and Mom and Dad having to let go of trying to save her (their way). “A Different Path” happens to fit neatly into that construct. Something I didn’t think about until after I had written it, but my subconscious may have known all along.

And this is the part that has the most value to me, the reason why I write. I learn and grow from the insights, being astonished at the knowledge that is right there in front of me at the tip of my nose. It requires presence, that miracle of understanding, watching and waiting for the moment of revelation, without compunction. When you put together two disparate pieces of information you have sought and collected, sometimes they ignite meaning that then shapes the work. Then I find myself writing about something other than I thought I was writing about when I started. It requires time and patience. And a certain amount of faith that deeper insight will come and will result in better writing, a faith in the unfolding. Holding out until the writing has “cured” enough. That’s the magic, the invisible magic, that it’s hard to talk to engineers about, that’s not straightforward, that doesn’t result in word counts as much as it comes from word counts. If I’m able to convey that meaning for the reader, it’s what deepens the writing so it becomes an experience for the reader that may deepen the meanings of life for them as it does for me.

The world in which this happens, that I work in, is quiet and solitary and private. You can’t see me working on it in my office because no one else is there. I work alone and in silence. Writing is a unique career. It is difficult to describe and only the tip of the iceberg is visible in the published product. I tend to think in terms of that visible part when I report on how “the book” is going. But that’s not the truth. The vast part of how the book is going is the journey I am on before I ever get to the published words.

I guess in that sense, writing is like love, the course of which never does run smooth.