From raising twins to mining literary gold

Long before having children of my own, I asked an author and father how long he thought it might take me to return to writing after giving birth.

Two weeks, he said. “Maybe a month, if you’re nursing.”

I held onto that assertion throughout my pregnancy, but then — like many of my best laid plans — it went awry. His situation was not mine, after all; I had two babies at once, and I was the one attempting to nurse them both.

Another twin mom who was dropping off a meal suggested that I remain in the bedroom with them, nursing them as needed, with a cooler of food within reach; I’d never have to leave them. Overwhelmed, I burst into tears — among the many I shed in those early days, trying to care for my babies but also wondering when I might return to my ambitions and goals. It’s a question of identity faced by many mothers, whether they are stay-at-home or work at an office.

Eventually, I figured out how to sustain my sons, Didi and Gege, and eventually, I began writing again. At first though, I was so exhausted that I had trouble stringing together a sentence, let alone a paragraph or a page. I felt guilty, too, when I wasn’t with them and sometimes tried to do it all at once, strapping one into a sling to nurse, white noise blasting, as I bounced on a yoga ball and typed over my son’s head.

But just as the twins progressed to rolling, crawling, cruising, walking, and then running, I pulled myself upright again. Nine months after giving birth, I began writing my debut novel.

In becoming a mother, I felt as if I’d stepped through a threshold, into another world, of emotion, of ideas, of experience that I hadn’t known and was eager to explore in my writing. I’d worried about what I could no longer do after becoming a parent, and that my time would be limited and no longer my own — which is indeed the case — but motherhood has also expanded my view, opened my heart and my fiction in ways I never predicted.

On Tuesday, Aug. 14, “A River of Stars,” about an immigrant Chinese mother who makes her way to San Francisco’s Chinatown and stakes her claim to the American dream, will be published.

I’ve been reflecting on the process, on the years of uncertainties, dead ends and wrong turns that every author takes while bringing forth a manuscript.

The metaphor seemed writ large at Empire Mine State Historic Park, in Grass Valley, one of the oldest, deepest and richest gold mines in California. We visited recently, continuing our regional tours of the mines that began with the Black Diamond sand and coal mines in Antioch; Didi remains obsessed as ever with plucking wealth from the earth.

Although the temperatures were scorching, with scant shade, the guide remained chipper as he told us the arduous, toxic methods to extract gold from ore. It awed me, to consider the backbreaking labor of the miners, swinging their sledgehammers and planting dynamite to blow up rocks, building out 367 miles of underground workings. At the top of the mine shaft, we stared down the dizzyingly steep incline. A stamp mill would crush the walnut-sized pieces of ore into a fine powder, and then gold would get extracted with the help of mercury or, in a later process, with cyanide.

A ton of ore would only produce half an ounce of gold, the guide said. About the size of a penny.

It seemed like an apt metaphor for writing. All the rough drafts, the words discarded in revision, the time spent chasing down research that you don’t end up using, then maybe, if you’re lucky, you end up with gold. Maybe, more often, it’s akin to tin, or rather, the work is tin-eared.

So much effort, for so little result. And yet, by the time the Empire Mine closed after a century, it had produced 5.6 million ounces of gold — equivalent to a box 7-feet long, 7-feet high and 7-feet deep, filled with gold.

A lyric becomes a song, becomes an album. A streak of pigment becomes a shape, becomes a painting. The first dollar earned at a family business becomes $20, and then $100. The words add up, and paragraphs become pages, become chapters, become a book. Inch by inch, we try.

I’ve been reflecting on the process, on the years of uncertainties, dead ends and wrong turns that every author takes.

I’ll be in conversation with Zyzzyva magazine’s Oscar Villalon at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 15, at the Booksmith, 1644 Haight St., S.F.