Open The Door

 

My fourth book is called Open The Door and it is a little different. It was a book that came as a new idea, not something that was already drafted or put in notes before. It was a fully freestyle creation from NaNoWriMo 2019. I did exactly what I was supposed to do according to NaNoWriMo rules: I showed up every day and wrote a certain amount of words.

In one way, it was a bit uncertain – will I have enough ideas, will the story fit into the word count and time frame, will I not run out of steam halfway? In the other way, it was liberating. No notes to go through, no limits. I allowed the characters to develop and do their own thing. I am still amazed by how well it worked.

I believe that the template was already in me, it wasn’t sweated over late in the evenings, staring at an empty page.

I knew I wanted to write a different story than before. But I still used references from my own life, mainly to modelling, ageing and (my old-time favourite) Japan. My first three books were about young people, about their uncertain lives, choices, and love lives. I wanted to move on to someone grown-up. I was experiencing motherhood and noticed that I was becoming invisible and that I was changing. I was thinking about the next stages of my life – what will happen after the big chunk of intensive mothering is done? When the little people become bigger and more independent? I will still be needed but in another way.

Another thing on my mind was the relationship between women. I was tired of the age-old formula of love between a woman and a man. The reality of married life might have had something to do with it, I’m not gonna lie. What if my heroine started to question her sexuality? I believe that it happens to many older people. Being brought up in the traditional notion of a nuclear family, seeing how society functions, reading books and seeing movies and TV dramas that always occupy themselves with the relationship between men and women, many of us follow the clues and question things later or never. I wanted my heroine to fall in love. But I wanted a different love. So I gave it to her.

In some ways, Open The Door may seem too easy. Nice, comfortably living people deal with very mild problems. There is no struggle, no drama. On the other hand, there are the subtle questions of life that come when we have the luxury to think about them. What do I want? Where do I belong? What will I do with the rest of my life?

And there are troubles and losses, too. Rachel’s life is far from easy when we meet her. Is it too ideal? I don’t know. This is how the story came to me, I am just a narrator. I wanted a nice story about nice people, who have a good life, home, and security, who can do a bit of soul searching. I probably needed it, because all of my past stories were about finding one’s roots, purpose, home, relationships, and building a career. I wanted to look at the next steps. In 2017 NaNoWriMo (I participated every other year and focused on editing etc. in the year after) my story dealt with very serious issues. It is still waiting for its next stages and it wasn’t easy to write, although, just like Open The Door, it asked to happen the way it did. So yes, this book is about the next chapter in life, it brings us more mature characters who are a long way from knowing everything. Because we are never quite done, are we?

Open The Door has Rachel, a thirty-six-year-old model, as a main character. She is a single mother and we find her worrying about her career prospects. She is well past the average model’s age. She has done well until now, but the clues about her ‘not getting any younger’ are slowly coming. What can she do next?

One of the problems with success is that you may have only one skill and some jobs don’t offer much progress. You are either in or you are out.

Rachel is well aware that many girls from the industry ended up married, the best of them were trophy wives, admired as much as they were in their modelling years. Finding a well-to-do man might be the best option. As luck would have it, Rachel is currently dating a man who would fit the bill perfectly. Only that he doesn’t mean much to her. Nor did any of her past relationships.

Rachel is slowly spiralling into a period of worry and change. She still manages to keep a brave face in front of her sixteen-year-old son, but how long can she keep going? Watching her son’s first love and comparing it to her relationships, she sees a void and doesn’t know how to find the right direction.

Instead of transforming herself into a professional housewife, Rachel manages to revive her career. Just like finding out that she has exceptional hands shortly after becoming a mum and saving her modelling career years ago, she discovers the blossoming market of older models. And it isn’t all. Love comes to her, too. In a very different form than she had expected. Donna, the mother of her son’s girlfriend, becomes her favourite person and it takes a while to understand that what Rachel feels is what she is missing. There may be a reason for her low interest in dating men. There was a lot to discover for Rachel and it was such fun being on the journey with her.