The End
Finishing the first draft
A week ago I typed THE END on page 264 of the manuscript for the fourth and final book in my CASTLE series. I’ve done this before for every one of my fourteen novels. It’s always a strange moment. I’m a slow writer and this book’s characters have been keeping me company for the best part of two years. Sitting down most afternoons to pick up the thread of this story has become the focusing event of my day. And, as has happened to me before, I can feel myself slipping into a form of postpartum or post-novel depression.
Where have they gone, these creatures of my imagination who told me their stories, punished me for long absences by going silent and kept me guessing right up until the end of our journey together? Because I’ve been lucky enough to live a sustained creative life, this feeling at the end of what is a first draft is a familiar one. I know there is more work to do on this book, but I also know that first, I must put it aside so that when I come back, I will have the distance and objectivity to recognize its flaws and be ready to revise.
This journey which is about to come to an end started over forty years ago. I wrote The Castle in the Attic in response to the sadness I felt when my son started kindergarten and a beloved nanny left us to go back to taking care of babies.
As all good books do, it started with my own feeling, in this case one of abandonment which I expect was much stronger than how my son felt. For five years, Mrs. Miller had calmly walked me through the tough and often tumultuous days with two toddlers. She was a gifted and experienced teacher who thought nothing of building the solar system for Andrew with a number of balls, string and toothpicks or of telling me when my kids needed discipline.
Here she is walking Andrew to school on the last day she was with us.
This is the first novel I didn’t outline ahead of time. Instead, I scribbled some notes and let the characters emerge and find their form and motives in their own time. I listened to them rather than ordering them around. I started a practice I call the “Journal of the book” and have kept it up ever since.
I ask myself questions. What’s Eve doing in that cave and how are you going to get her out? Is Gudrin jealous of the growing friendship between Sonia and William? Without the magic token, how can William defeat this wily villain? And I cheer myself on. You’ve broken the back of the book! Great idea to switch the banquet to a bonfire. Every writer needs encouragement no matter where it comes from.
So this is the fourth book in the series. I have reclaimed the rights to The Castle in the Attic, which means it is only available in paperback here, but still available in audio here. (Also on Audible but I prefer to support independent bookstores through Libro.fm.) The second, The Battle for the Castle, is still in print.
The prequel, The Cradle in the Castle, which I finished in 2023 is not yet published. And the fourth, still untitled, should be ready by the end of the year.
But William will not be time traveling again. He and I both know that for sure. He defeated the wizard in the first book with his body, the rats in Battle with his mindand in this one, the arch villain who sent them all, with his spirit. William is ready to return to his 20th Century life and stay there.
I admit that I’ve left many an open door for the series to continue with other characters carrying the story. Perhaps my grandchildren will write those sequels. But for me, this is the end of the series that started with my first time-traveling fantasy novel more than 40 years ago.
No wonder I’m feeling a bit blue.
Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop (www.elizabethwinthropalsop.com) is the author of over 50 works of fiction for adults and children under the pen name Elizabeth Winthrop. These include the award-winning fantasy series, The Castle in the Attic and The Battle for the Castle as well as the short story, The Golden Darters, read on the nationwide radio program, Selected Shorts, and included in Best American Short Story anthology, and Island Justice and In My Mother’s House, two novels now available as eBooks. She is the daughter of the acclaimed journalist, Stewart Alsop. Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies, a family history about her parents’ love affair during World War II and their marriage lived in the spotlight of Washington during the 1950s was published by Regal House, October 25, 2022.
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I guess there is something comforting about the way today’s youth have become accustomed to their parents/guardians checking on them at all times via smart phones, etc. It may feel like being held in a kind of web (and here I’m not referring to the World Wide Web), a loving network. But it also suggests to me what it’s like to be trapped in a spider’s snare. The idea that none of us can have a moment when we aren’t being scrutinized in some way makes me shudder. What has happened to the notion of privacy and freedom? Am I old-fashioned to think they still are virtues?
I’m grieving the loss of dictionaries, thick, massive volumes that I used to get lost in. I would open a page and find hundreds of words, all of them demanding my attention, each a miniature world to explore. But now I’ve become a victim of on-line lexicons because they are handier than putting aside my laptop computer and marching into the other room to unload the Oxford from a bookshelf where it resides. 
Foghorns blast through the 7 AM San Francisco overcast. The only woman in the place, I saunter into the longshoreman’s union hall, trying to appear as if I did this every day. A few cigarette-scarred wooden tables offer a place for the men to gather and talk while waiting to be called to work. Billowing clouds of cigarette smoke hang ominously over everyone. 
Like detectives, writers need to be constantly observant, picking up clues from what people are wearing, how they gesture, the words they speak, the way they interact with others. They study people’s facial expressions and what they might suggest about the person, storing away the data in their memory banks. Or they’ll take notes in a writer’s journal that they’ll refer to later. 
Memoir writing blurs the line between truth and imagination in this revealing conversation with Lily Iona MacKenzie. We explore how creative writing techniques shape both fiction narrative and personal stories, as Lily explains her unique approach: “you lie in service of the truth.”
Yesterday, I had to kill time (terrible metaphor) while waiting to hear a friend of mine do a reading of his newly published memoir at a Corte Madera bookstore. So I hung out at Marin County’s Corte Madera Library. 
For years I felt guilty about breaking the heirloom toys my stepfather’s mother had preserved, relics of another era. I can still remember the excitement of lifting each object out of the boxes where they had been stored and bringing them to life again: tiny china dishes with hand-painted flowers; a miniature stagecoach carrying riders and pulled by horses; dolls with porcelain faces and hands, features frozen in smiles, dressed in stylish Victorian gowns; a doll house with elegant furniture and a family. 
Editing writing requires tremendous restraint. I was reminded of this recently when a poem I had submitted to an anthology was accepted providing I approved of the editor’s changes. I’m open to thoughtful revision suggestions—a text can always be improved—but I assume the recommendations will be just that, insightful observations that cause me to re-think my work. In that light, I can re-enter a poem or story and see if any of the ideas resonate enough for me to make changes. Yet since I’m the poem’s creator, I expect to revise it myself and have the last word on its content. 
I’ve been thinking about how loosely we use abstract words like love, happiness, and truth as if they had concrete, observable meaning. I tend to revolt from using love to close my email or other exchanges unless I really feel love for the person I’m corresponding with. It bothers me when people sign their correspondence “love” without considering whether or not the emotion really applies to the recipient. Maybe you feel loving towards someone on most days, but not every day. Isn’t it deceitful to say “love” if you aren’t feeling it at the moment? Wouldn’t such a response seem confusing? It leads the reader to believe that the writer actually has such strong feelings, that somehow we’re part of the writer’s inner circle. Often that isn’t true. 
Being a first-rate writer requires the same kind of training that an architect receives. A typical program includes courses in architectural history and theory, building design, construction methods, professional practice, math, physical sciences, and liberal arts. Writers may not need to study math or the physical sciences, but they do need to give themselves the best liberal arts education they can find, both formal and informal. And like architects, in order to be successful in their field, writers need not only vision and a rich imagination but also a strong foundation. 
Thank you, Zackary Vernon, for taking the time to share your professional writing journey with me and my readers. 
Being part of an on-line writing group for several years has provided many benefits. But with the positives come a few negatives.
Until recently, if I had wanted a restful getaway, I would not have chosen San Francisco or any big city. Getting away meant heading out of town, usually for a coastal inn. I wanted the leisurely pace and ocean views of Mendocino, Pacific Grove, Carmel, or Big Sur. 
Onyx wind chimes shaped like birds hang outside my bedroom. Each time a breeze stirs them, their music reminds me of the first trip I took to Mexico. While there, I was hoping to discover a part of the country that photographs can’t capture—the spirit of the place. Lawrence Durrell claims that landscape communicates this aspect. He says, “All landscapes ask the same question in the same whisper, ‘I am watching you—are you watching yourself in me’?”