“The transition to new work after I complete a story or book is the tricky place for me, the liminal space in which I am no longer inside what I just finished, but am not yet inside whatever is on the horizon. I am closing a door and walking away, even as the path to the next work stretches ahead with no definition. That borderland is filled with promise, but also with unease. I leave my completed work spent, filled with doubts about what might come next. But I am not there yet. I am simply moving between. Nothing needs to be defined. I have come to love that scary in-between place. I find that moment freeing as I start to open to possible ideas.
And those ideas arise as stories, as if a river has been flowing beside me all along, and now, freed of the completed work, I reach in for what is new. This is not a mysterious or abstract act. It feels concrete: this specific story, with these people in this place? Or this story? Or this one? The abundance is reassuring, and becomes a catalyst. I have come to trust that liminal space, to welcome it as generative and rich. It feels like a tool, a mechanism I can rely on to jump-start fresh writing. Trust the promise of possibilities and it will free you to move into new work.”
—Meredith Hall, author of Beneficence (David R. Godine, 2020)
Photo credit: Sandra Hall Bourrie