The Words Will Come to Me

A novelist on deadline seeks solitude in a vacation rental but finds she can't keep it all to herself for long.

- XOCHITL GONZALEZ

Before I was a novelist, I was a wedding planner. The two occupations have more in common than handling multiple plots)-except for human interaction. Wedding planning is quite social while writing novels is intrinsically solitary. Which is no small part of why I switched professions in the first place. Despite wearing the coat of an extrovert, underneath I am pure Greta Garbo. I want to be alone. And this was never truer than by the summer of 2020 when I rented a gorgeous historic house in downtown Kingston, New York.

The early pandemic found me without a permanent residence and on a deadline. In March, while getting my MFA in Iowa, I'd come home to New York City for a quick visit to celebrate having just sold my first novel. Three months and one case of COVID-19 later, I was quarantined with my best friend, her husband, and their toddler in their Brooklyn apartment. Before long, the close quarters and endless sounds of sirens made revising my novel there untenable. I decided to head upstate.