Mission Accomplished, Now what?

Anyone who knows me, will nod in agreement when I say I'm not exactly a techno inclined person. Aside from my admitted preference for hanging my freshly washed clothes out on my mile long clothes line strung taut between house and carriage house rather then tossing them into a clothes dryer, or hand washing my dishes (because renovating the kitchen in our 130 year old house meant carting away the dishwasher in lieu of an old cast iron double sink) even my writing life is a reflection of my old-fashioned sensibilities. Although I love and cherish my lovely pink laptop computer now, it was a long time in coming. For years I was a yellow legal pad girl with a fistful of ballpoints. Not until it was time to produce a submitable copy of a finished manuscript, would I borrow a friend's electric typewriter just long enough to translate my scribbles to neat and tidy white pages. While I still compose on yellow pads at the beginning of any novel project, I welcome the transition to the computer when the time comes to fine-tune, rewrite, edit, edit, and edit.

Nevertheless, it was altogether intimidating and just a tad bit horrifying to consider putting together my own author website. But even so, I am certainly pragmatic enough to face the facts and know when the time comes to roll up my sleeves and jump in. (The facts being that I have neither hundreds nor thousands of dollars to pay someone else to design my site for me). So, imagine my shock, surprise, and eventual awe when I actually did take the leap and found myself swimming rather then sinking as I'd envisioned. My website, www.barbaraforteabate.com has been created and launched in patient wait of visitors AND my novel's release date (as yet to be determined). It's certainly exciting, wonderful, and thrilling...but something else as well. Something I hadn't expected and can only hope is temporary, which is to say I'm feeling a strange sense of "over exposure." To think that I haven't even had the experience of book selling and full-on promotion yet and already I'm questioning how long I can personally deal with so much "Barbara." Is this normal? Temporary? (As one can only hope, since this is no way to savor the joy of a dream realized.) Is it merely a normal, temporary, state of overload for someone far more accustomed to the quiet life of a working writer, as opposed to the inyourface author pushing her baby out into the world with the underlying fear that no one else will find her offspring quite as beautiful as she does?

Procrastination Hell

Any writer who's done their research can tell you the great importance of self-promotion in the rather fragile world of unknown, debut authors. Not only can they explain the essentials point by point, if they're properly prepared they will also have a detailed business plan that's been as thoroughly written out as their book. An ideal plan they are fired-up and eager to launch mucho months before their book's release. It's important to get it right. Necessary in fact, should said writer aspire to have anyone other then their mother click-on Amazon to buy it.

So, yes I do know and understand this and have conscientiously diagrammed my business/promotion essentials on detailed pages. And now, while my book contract is still young I've highlighted the next step on the master plan - which is to thoughtfully list (done) and prepare (not done) mailing envelopes for those reviewers I intend to send copies of my book galleys the very instant they are available from the printer. But rather then having this mostly uncomplicated task completed and checked-off the list - ready to move onto the next ingredient charted on my list, I have too easily fallen into the shameful trap of procrastination. Back-burnering necessary tasks in favor of the 30% off coupon from Kohls - and then three days later returning to the store to cash in my "Kohls Cash" (bonuses earned from the purchases of the previous weeks shopping trip.)

And I have to wonder if running parallel with the elated sense of accomplishment that comes from arriving in sight of the goal line, is some unanticipated sense of uncertainty (fear?) as to the next stage once the marathon's been run and the finish line crossed.

Regardless, whatever temptations may be tugging at my attentions, I know too well the danger of surrendering to those seemingly innocent urges to vacuum the house (there are entire colonies of dust mites reproducing in those carpets!), rake the leaves piling-up in the yard (they're 3 feet deep! it's gonna kill the grass!), shop (but it's 30% off for Pete's sakes!), or catch an afternoon nap (ten minutes is all I need...). To give in makes it that much harder to start-up where I left off. But that's how it is, we start-up and we keep going, because we have to. It's what we do.

My Great Publishing Adventure!

My contract is signed, author photo snapped, manuscript heading into pre-production, promotion plan is in order and slowly cranking to life. I am excited, thrilled, ecstatic, and yet few people as yet know about it. That in itself is difficult to explain considering I've been working toward this milestone FOREVER, though maybe that's the issue. Although not superstitious, I am cautious enough that I never count my chickens before they hatch, never cross an intersection against the taboo red hand (well maybe on ocassion, but rarely), never announce "potential" good news until it's a done deal that's been wrapped and tied with a bow.

Even so, I think my reluctance to shouting from the rooftops that "my novel is coming, my novel is coming!" at this point in time must be for the truth that I've been a writer far longer than I've been an author. Author, as in published; sentances bound between two covers, neatly shelved amongst the other pretty volumes on a bookstore shelf. Or maybe my slow motion response to declare my own unbelievable and amazing news is due to simple wonder and awe that the dream is at long last cranking out into a space in real life where it will have an actual existence beyond the simple confines of my own head.

Wonder and awe is no exaggeration either. Over these past several days since signing on the dotted line (November 9th - the BIG day), I find myself continually amazed by my own news. So much so that more and more I catch myself while in the midst of conversation, watching tv, at a doctor's appointment, all at once picturing my beautifully finished novel open in a stranger's hands (unlike friends and relatives that are REQUIRED to purchase and read my book) -- unknown fingers turning the pages, eyes following the words, thoughts holding my story.

So, here it starts - or in truth continues - my great publishing adventure. The flag is down, the race is on!

Sentanced for Life

Somehow, it still surprises me to hear or read a comment from a fellow writer indicating that they, too, are experiencing some sense or feeling I'd believed to be exclusively mine. That I am not the only one staring out past the rain streaked glass on a dreary day waffling back and forth over what I should be doing, but am not - not so enthusiastically hunting for whatever it will take to sober-up my stagnant self and kick my way past whatever impenetrable barrier my resistance has erected between me and the waiting keyboard.

And yet I know better, a recognition (or maybe confession) that merely works to increase the frustration. After all, can I truly be so self absorbed as to fall to the belief at times that I'm wholly alone, dragging my tattered baggage through a deserted rail station that hasn't seen a train in fifty years? Thus I'm convinced that a writer's melancholy is the byproduct of gray skies and gloomy weather. After all, I rarely feel so tragic on a golden sunshiny day.

Ordinarily I am the most regimented writer you will ever meet - excepting when I am not. When I convince myself that I absolutely positively need a quickie nap to refresh a drooping mind, or turn up the volume on the inner voice in my head that insists on the importance of catching an afternoon movie - not as a diversion from the art of creation, but as necessary food for a temporarily stalled imagination. Just as an afternoon spent surfing the web is research and not simply wasted time that should've been spent face-to-face with the manuscript in progress.

It's funny really, how well I see through my own tricks and excuses, yet that's not to say that I altogether understand why writers so often play these ridiculous games with themselves. If we don't absolutely love it, if writing is such torture, we can simply walk away - become a brain surgeon or Supreme Court Justice -- we don't have to write.

And yet, we do. We do because not to write is impossible - unimaginable. Because even when we cheat the muse and play hooky from the keyboard, we are dreaming words, characters, and scenes in our heads, knowing we will find no rest until we have laid them out on the waiting page.

The Secret of Lies - Barbara Forte Abate

Prologue

Maybe it's the stark brilliance of the pale moon suspended in a hard black sky that somehow makes everything about this night feel harsher, uglier; failing to soften what now seems especially unconscionable.

But, still, I pretend not to notice, cautiously opening the door of Ash's old blue Buick and sliding into the drivers' seat, shoving away the fact that all at once arrives with the insistence of knuckles rapping against a glass pane, that I haven't paused to consider what I'll do if the car doesn't start. As it is, every movement feels sharply critical, almost painful, my insides tightly clenched around the fear that Ash will wake before I'm gone.

Over these past months I have become intimately versed to his sleep patterns and the varying depths of his slumber. But even so, the acrid taste of unease clings like sour bile inside my mouth as I release the brake and the behemoth slowly drifts backward.

The movement proves inconsequential, the car stubbornly halting after only a few feet. I push two fingers into the breast pocket of my cotton blouse, feeling for the sharp edges of the single key I've slipped from Ash's key ring, a thick knot of anxiety immediately rising at the back of my throat with the understanding that there is no other recourse then to start the engine.

My heart clatters like a galloping horse inside my chest as the worn-out car chokes once… twice…then sputters to life. And the swell of my breathing – raspy and tight – throbs a passionate rhythm against my eardrums as I swing the vehicle around in the driveway; the sound of tires crunching over gravel striking against the jangled edges of my exposed nerves like gunshots.

I nose the car out toward the highway, drawn if by the taught threads of an imminent slow torture, daring only one final glance in the rearview mirror as the tires edge onto pavement, watching just long enough to see the dark silhouette of the house swallowed up by the night – only an instant before it is fully gone.

There is nothing stirring. Nothing reminiscent of the living beyond the grunts emanating from the tired engine as the car passes slowly along the nodding streets. And despite my screaming urgency to be away from this place, I hold firm against the impulse to slam my foot down on the gas pedal, knowing it is essential that I not risk drawing attention to my leaving.

On Main Street, the only interruption to the ominous veil of darkness draped over the shadowy buildings is the harsh glare of artificial light spilling over the sidewalk outside Tootie's all-night diner, and beyond that, the constant yellow blink of the traffic light suspended over the intersection like a fallen moon.

Beneath the smoky film of a descending mirage, the compacted residential streets have all but melted away into the darkness, and all at once a vast green sea of corn is rolling past in waves. The farmlands spreading out to eclipse the landscape in every direction beyond the flat ribbon of concrete roadway; neatly quilted squares of fenced pasture held motionless in the soft drape of moonlight.

The openness of the interstate unfurls before me, unraveled like twine across what has always been an impenetrable barrier. And the world lying beyond looks immense, the earth itself rising up to meet me.

It isn't long in coming that my immediate sense of elation cedes to the superior press of guilt and shame. How can I do this? Ash has done nothing to mark himself deserving of such callous betrayal. His one mortal fault has been to love me, and maybe that is his sin. This single crime running parallel with the fatal flaw that resides here, within me, poisonously tangled inside; deep enough that no means exists for grasping it and wrenching it away.

And while I am aware that this cowardly act of desertion will mark me as wholly unforgivable, I just as clearly understand that there is no going back; altogether certain, that my determined choice to carve myself free from my life, slicing away both past and present, insures that there can be no prodigal return.

I can feel the tension gradually slipping away as the distance between Callicoon and my eventual destination lengthens, my fingers at last relaxing their tight knuckled grip on the steering wheel. I've left. Done the unthinkable and relinquished my life. Where I go doesn't matter, my only concern is that it be distant. Further than the past might ever dare seek to reclaim me.

I wonder where I am. A soft peachy glow is rising in the east and the subtle coming of morning's light has altogether erased the sensation of reckless adventure that has successfully carried me through the night.

Fatigue pulls heavily at my eyelids. There are so many decisions to be made, yet my mind hangs suspended in a thick paste of confusion that refuses to dissipate, and I am all at once struggling for breath, frantic to squelch the panic rising like seawater into my throat. Where am I going? Do I even know what I'm doing? Do I even have a plan?

The insistent blare of an automobile horn startles me back to full conscious, slapping me sober to the realization that I've drifted into the wrong lane of traffic, an oncoming car wildly swerving to avoid collision.

Again the car's engine has overheated and I find myself stranded alongside the roadway, a flock of motorists blowing past (an occasional craned neck or fleeting glimpse in a rearview mirror the only indication of fleeting interest), as I wait for the geyser of steam jetting from the radiator to subside. Not for the first time, I consider deserting the worthless hunk of tires and metal. Yet, despite my wildly floundering state, thankfully or not, reason prevails and I impatiently wait for the chance to move on.

Stopping to fill the radiator at a gas station, I consider calling Ash from the payphone. I stand inside the dirty, glass-walled booth at the edge of the parking lot without pulling the accordion door shut behind me, imagining the sequence of numbers required to place the call – see my fingers dialing – though in the end returning the receiver to its cradle without depositing the necessary coins, knowing there is really nothing I might say now that will explain any of this.

Another night is gone.

The afternoon has turned stormy, and after traveling for much of the day in a heedless driving rain, I pull into the near empty parking lot of a motel somewhere in Iowa.

The stale air inside the room holds tightly to the pungent odor of mothballs and mustiness, but I hardly care. All I desire is a shower and sleep. After three days on the road, I feel like a soiled garment balled up and forgotten at the bottom of a laundry hamper. And when I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror I am oddly frightened by the reflection of the stranger staring back at me: an expressionless, hollow-eyed entity watching from behind the glass.

The plain cotton sheets dressing the bed have absorbed the clammy dampness of the room. It is almost painfully cold and I curl into a tight ball beneath the thin blanket and wildly patterned bedspread, attempting to radiate the deadening chill from my limbs.

Outside the rain continues to pound against the roof and windows like an angry fist. From somewhere in the room comes the distinct sound of dripping water, but I don't care to investigate. It is of little consequence to me whether this room, or even the entire earth, should wash away.

I squeeze my eyes tight against the dark, grasping at sleep. But my mind resists the command – the sheets tangling around me like determined arms as I pitch and roll uselessly.

For no reason in particular I all at once remember the small plastic radio I'd noticed earlier on a scratched veneer table opposite the bed. I drop my bare feet to the cold linoleum floor and stumble forward in the darkness.

The channels crackle and hiss as I turn the dial and listen for intelligible sounds, my fingers hesitating over recognizable tones: a polka station, gospel music, a local news program...Until all at once, my body stiffens in mid-search. Wavering…fading…then clearing as I attempt to adjust the tuning, is a voice at once recognizable – Elvis Presley singing "Love Me Tender."

A whirlwind of undetermined emotions stir and rise to the surface like a surging crowd, but the song is over quickly and another voice immediately leaps out from the tiny speaker. "Hold tight and we'll be right back after these announcements, bringing you another hit, this one from 1957, when we continue in just a moment with more classic, golden oldies."

Golden oldie? Since when have the remembrances of my life become oldies? It was only twelve years ago that I'd been a gangly fourteen-year-old with a ponytail and a poodle skirt. Is it possible that such an extraordinary chunk of time has found a way to slip away across the sill and out of reach? Could all of it have passed so long ago? Become so far away?

Waves of emotion wash over me, deepening in intensity as they invade my heart and mind with a precise edge of sharpened clarity. Those days have shaped my life; never quite forgotten days I've purposely packed away, trying hard to forget, even now, as they swell and swirl upwards in memories that break like the sea against the rocks.

The sea. That was where it began and ended. The whole of my existence. All of it molded and shrewdly defined by the hand of the beautiful, but insatiably hostile sea.

Chapter One

"You look like a slimy old reptile sunning itself," I said to my sister Eleanor as she rubbed tanning oil onto her already slick limbs.

"Still better then a pale white pile of seagull shit."

"Ha ha, so hilarious," I sneered, rolling over onto my stomach to fidget with the dial on the transistor radio we were forced to share.

"Hey, I was listening to something," Eleanor turned her head, glaring daggers from her beach towel.

"Big deal, it's my turn now."

"Baloney. It hasn't been an hour yet."

"Yeah – more like two."

"You're so full of crap, Stevie."

I ignored her, twisting the dial to WRR, my favorite station. (The RR stood for rock and roll and played more Elvis Presley records than any other station.) I closed my eyes, wiggling my toes in the sand bordering the bottom edge of my painstakingly smoothed out beach towel, impossibly content there beside the rolling sea, the sun caressing my skin, Elvis gyrating behind my lids; a scene almost painful in its perfection.

"I don't see what's so great about that guy. He always look's like he's smelling something rotten."

"You're such a dope Eleanor. Elvis is a sensual person. That's the way sensual people look."

"Oh perfect – words from an expert. I think it's more like gas pains."

I bit back my retort, rolling over to bake my front side as if I hadn't heard. It was the same transparent ruse whenever Eleanor grew bored with sunbathing, baiting me into some stupid argument for the sole purpose of entertaining herself with my indignation. Despite my awareness of her tactics, there were still plenty of occasions when I leapt right in anyway, as eager and willing as she was to spar insults. It all depended on my mood of course, since I could just as easily ignore her, in which case she'd eventually give-up and pack herself up to the house where she'd spend the rest of the afternoon engrossed in the worn-out copies of Confidential magazine she kept under her mattress.

And while many of Eleanor's habits remained accustomed and familiar, there were subtle changes as well. Most obvious, the marked change in her behavior once we arrived at the beach, namely her settlement on a plateau notably heightened from the one she generally occupied whenever we were away from home. She now preferred to be by herself much of the time and was annoyingly distracted when she wasn't, as if the company of anyone other then herself was inconvenient as it was boring. I easily assumed her newborn attitude mostly had to do with her having grown breasts. They'd been a long time in coming and now that they'd emerged I figured she felt there was a lot for her to meditate over.

We'd been spending our summers with Aunt Smyrna and Uncle Calvin ever since Eleanor was twelve and I ten. As soon as school let out in June we were ready and eager to leave behind the family farm in Callicoon, Pennsylvania, traveling by train all the way to Long Island where our aunt and uncle spent the season in their great old summer house; a wondrous relic from another era, settled high on the rocks extending up from the sandy shoreline to stare out defiantly over the North Atlantic.

As often as we'd mulled over it privately, Eleanor and I had never quite figured out how it was that our consistently cautious parents surrendered to releasing us from Callicoon each summer (afraid that asking our parents directly might inevitably result in their questioning and rethinking the trip onto the side of permanent denial). Increasingly in recent years, we'd found ourselves shamelessly ease-dropping on their quiet conversations, eager for some insight into their motivations. Yet we'd detected no obvious links between our vacations away from home and those private anxieties passed between them; concern for the Callicoon boys who'd gone off to fight the war in Korea; dismay over the ugly scenes of desegregation unfolding in the South and shockingly reeled into our living room via the nightly news once our father finally conceded to buying a television set – images of black school children harangued by white parents seeming all but impossible in a civilized world. And now, their increasing unease as a Senator by the name of McCarthy unleashed a formidable attack against the "dangerous threat" of Communists living and working amongst us – devious persons expert in their portrayal of ordinary citizens, whether it be someone's mailman, favorite movie star, or a neighbor's eighty-year old grandmother. (And while neither of us were especially clear as to the actual nature of Communists or the particular threats such persons wielded, Eleanor and I nevertheless agreed that Callicoon was ripe with suspicious characters, and had thus spent considerable hours composing lists of names to send on to Senator McCarthy for investigation.)

Not until some years later would I find myself pausing to consider over the possibility that our mother and father's purpose in allowing us to leave home every summer might've been intended as something other then simple merciful release from the tedium of everyday life on our farm. That maybe the trip had been permitted as a concession of another sort, allowing my sister and me to savor the last visages of youthful innocence before we'd grown too old to ignore the rather messy world churning out beyond Callicoon.

Nevertheless, whatever their reasoning, in the final weeks before school let out Eleanor and I diligently held ourselves to twin images of saintliness; both of us unanimous in the agreement that no chance be taken which might jeopardize our leaving. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil – our indispensable commandments for the month of June.

Mom always cried when we left with Daddy for the train station, both Eleanor and me working up a sprinkling of dutiful tears in return. As much as Mom worried about our making the trip alone, we couldn't have been more excited or fearless ourselves.

Eleanor would immediately move to another seat away from the one we'd shared at departure as soon as the train had safely left the station. While Daddy insisted we stick together for the duration of the trip, Eleanor was of the opinion that my presence was a crippling hindrance to her successful portrayal of whichever persona it was she'd chosen to affect for the length of our journey. (An international spy on one occasion, an orphaned heiress, a famous actress the year after that…) Rather then being insulted, I mostly just thought her amusing, having no reasonable inkling as to who she expected to deceive with her silly performances. Since from where I was sitting, she still looked like a dopey kid with far too many freckles.

Until shockingly, the year she turned fourteen, Eleanor actually managed to garner the attentions of a pimply faced boy sporting a swept back duck-tail and a rather ridiculous looking pink shirt. I immediately launched into my own best efforts to annoy her – snickering and rolling my eyes whenever I succeeded in catching the corner of her eye – so that by the time we'd reached Long Island station she was refusing to speak to me.

Now, Eleanor stood, picking up her bottle of tanning oil and propping her sunglasses on the bridge of her nose. "Don't use up the batteries." She nudged my outstretched arm with her toe.

"Go away," I said without opening my eyes.

Eleanor bent to retrieve her towel, deliberately shaking a shower of sand over my oil coated figure as she yanked it up and balled it under her arm.

"Drop dead twice, jerk," I shouted after her retreating figure, the oath bringing little satisfaction whatsoever.

While I undoubtedly loved my uncle as much as I ever had, I was nevertheless relieved now that he was only at the house on weekends. Unlike the summers previous when he'd commuted daily to his job in New York City, this year Uncle Cal had settled on a routine where he stayed the week at the apartment he and Aunt Smyrna kept in the city, not returning to the beach until late on Friday evenings.

Tonight Uncle Cal had drunk too much wine with supper again, the certitude of his inebriation readily apparent as his conversation became increasingly animated and jovial, his gestures broadly exaggerated.

He continued to fill his glass, his words growing a little too loud, his comments a little too sharp. A menacing undercurrent began to surface in his remarks to Aunt Smyrna as the meal dragged on, her countenance visibly stiffening with a ripening expression of embarrassment – or insult – though I had no certainty of which it might be. I'd never witnessed such bold animosity between them in previous years and I found it both puzzling and increasingly unnerving now.

Supper at last concluded, we retreated outside to sit amongst the comfortable collection of old wicker chairs scattered about on the wide porch that jutted out from the front of the house like a toothy grin.

Aunt Smyrna handed each of us a soft worn blanket to wrap ourselves against the damp chill rolling up from the crashing sea. The North Atlantic was frigid yet, and although Eleanor and me had darted in and out of the water when we'd gone down to the beach that morning – high-pitched squeals punctuating the dash from chilly ocean back to warm sand – we'd spent the majority of our time stretched out in the sun.

Uncle Cal grumbled under his breath as he attempted to light his pipe. Despite the protective cup of his hand, the far reaching breeze waving up from the ocean teasingly whisked away each weak flame birthed by his succession of angry match strikes, until finally, a subtle orange glow appeared successful in the bowl of packed tobacco.

"Why don't you live here in the winter, too, Aunt Smyrna?" I asked, after a while.

"The same reason nobody else does. This place is positively arctic in the winter months."

"But isn't it sort of beautiful too? The ocean's never really ugly, is it?"

"Well yes, I suppose it's still pretty – but lonely. By the end of September all the summer people are gone and I'm ready to leave too. I've never been one for isolation."

"You're such a ninny, Stevie," Eleanor scoffed. "Who'd want to stay out here wrapped-up like an Eskimo when they can spend the entire winter in New York shopping and going to parties?"

"How about you mind your own business, El."

"If you didn't say such stu –"

Uncle Cal reached out and rapped his pipe sharply against the porch railing, a signal we received as a distinct motion to cease our bickering, although it was just as likely he was simply emptying the spent remains of tobacco from the bowl.

Eleanor curled a corner of her lip, glared at me, the lopsided smirk lending an especially menacingly air to her expression. I quickly stuck out my tongue before glancing away.

Our uncle stood, carelessly laying aside his pipe on a table strewn with magazines. He'd remained clearly detached from the rest of us all evening, so that I'd nearly forgotten his presence, easily assuming that his mental seclusion was nothing more complicated then the effects of all he'd had to drink before, during, and after our meal.

"I'm going for a walk," he said, turning his back on Aunt Smyrna. "Don't bother to leave the light on for me, it'll attract moths."

She didn't answer, the three of us watching in silence as he moved down the weathered flight of steps leading to the empty beach below.

"El? Why do you think he doesn't love her anymore?" I whispered hoarsely through the darkness, hours later, after we'd gone upstairs to bed.

We'd shared the same spacious room for each of the summers we'd spent here. Eleanor always insisting on sleeping in the twin bed located on the far side of the room where two large windows looked out over the ocean, relegating me to accept the matching bed positioned opposite, on the windowless, less desirable side of the room.

"What are you talking about?"

"Aunt Smyrna and Uncle Cal…he doesn't love her anymore."

"What makes you think he doesn't love her?"

"He isn't very nice to her. Not like he used to be."

"Well married people get like that sometimes. It doesn't mean anything."

"No, it's different than that," I persisted. "Something's changed."

She didn't reply and I wondered if she'd gone to sleep.

"El-"

She rolled over, offering her back in a delayed response to my statement.

"Don't insist on looking for things that aren't there, Stevie."

It seemed I'd only just fallen asleep when my lids vaulted open. From outside came the dull sound of footsteps treading across the porch, followed by the careless slam of the screen door, and I knew it would be Uncle Cal finally returned from his walk on the beach.

I tipped my head toward the round-faced clock on Eleanor's night table. It was nearly midnight. In a few more hours he'd be leaving again to catch the train back to New York and the solace of untroubled tranquility would once more be returned to our daily routine. Excepting of course, that Eleanor would still be here in the morning.

Lightening the load...

Even those who know me well would lift a doubtful eyebrow and tilt their heads to hear me say that I have a fanatical distaste of clutter for the fact that of my vast and ever growing collections. True, I do have an extraordinary collection of Depression Glass, Vintage Halloween, Antique Typewriters, Inkwells, Pens, Vintage clothing and accessories, hats....you get the idea, I like stuff. Nevertheless, I am insistent that my goodies live a tidy organized life which means there is an almost constant sorting taking place within these walls. As much as I gravitate towards the image of a wonderfully cluttered environs generally designated for productive and prolific writers (teetering stacks of books, carpets littered with the fallen leaves of carelessly dropped papers, half-empty coffee cups...) there's no way I could ever actually claim such a disheveled workspace for myself. I am after all a a woman of symmetrical organization. Hence the past week has been a whirlwind of activity that Martha Steward would greatly admire. Activity that unfortunately leaves me feeling as frustrated as it does accomplished, for the single reasoning that for every completed task or fulfilled errand there is the constant knocking in my head reminding me, "Aren't you supposed to be writing something? Or at the very least, researching, editing, CREATING SOMETHING????

Hum...well, okay, credit where credit is due. I have in fact taken some time to juggle words here and there. Which is to say that I did manage to rewrite (twice!) the 150 word synopsis I need to compose for one of my novels today. 150 words certain to intrigue, tempt, and inspire the reader of said masterpiece to actually PURCHASE the 376 page novel it describes. That's 376 pages condensed into 150 impossible to locate words. Well, writers do that all the time, you say. Yes, but the question is how? You can bet I've read the books, articles, and testimonials of writer's who have perfected the process and lived to write another day, but it remains for me a hellish task -- hand in hand with the dreaded query. And oh so deceitful! I have taken to rewriting the beast on a daily basis now, each interlude at the keyboard concluding with a satisfied click of the SAVE button, only to find myself disgusted and horrified the following day when I peek-in for a final read which is anything but final. All of which means there will then be another two hours of arranging, inventing, and composing that which will only be hideous and lacking the following day. Thankfully I've been there and know what to expect. That after days of misery there will come a morning, afternoon, or late evening when all at once the words are right and the deed is done.

Goodbye to one of the Good Guys

Such heartbreaking news about the death of Patrick Swayze. Certainly it's no surprise considering his very public battle with pancreatic cancer, but he was truly one of the good guys and there was always the hope that he would be that someone who would defy the odds - not because he was a celebrity, but more so because of his uplifting persona, strong spirit, and dedication to fight the monster that is cancer.

I'd watched his interview with Barbara Walters last year and was so blown away by his endearing honestly and "non-Hollywoodish" attitude. There just aren't that many celebs at the present time that leave me so impressed or inspired to care. Sure I could watch Dirty Dancing or Ghost a bazillion times and fall in love with Johnny or Sam again and again, but it's more then that. Once the performace was over and the camera stopped rolling, he remained a REAL person and not just another of those over-the-top, blow-up entitys crowding the reigning celebrity scene.

Not that I'm intending for a rant here, but seriously, how did bad behavior become the front runner of ALL news???? I admit I'm not above an occasional gossipy tidbit, but not as national headlines day after day. Hum...could I possibly be referring to those current media darlings, Jon and Kate? Just who are these people and why has it been necessary to detail their misbehaved antics minute by minute? We get the idea, they have a bad marriage -- he's a player and she's a shrew. (I'm guessing here since I admit I can't make myself care enough to actually read the encyclopedia of articles currently in print.) Regardless, lets call it The End and get back to real news, like blow-by-blow tidbits of Lindsey Lohan's personal life or Paris Hilton's latest home movie, as there certainly must be one ready to crash the market.

Alas, RIP, Patrick Swayze, one of Hollywood's finest.

Quote of the day

"these are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but MINDS alive on the shelves"
Gilbert Highet 1906-1978
Teacher & Scholar

I am not familiar with Gilbert Highet, but his words are immortalized on a bronze plaque outside the public library in Baltimore. I don't remember much of whatever else I saw that day on our family trip to the adjacent Baltimore Aquarium, but I do have a photograph of this plaque beside my desk and I find myself glancing at it often. Reading and rereading these simple words which are really so profound, inasmuch as they speak volumes to my writers heart when I struggle to compose that perfect sentence or design that imperfect character who will grow into my story. Writing...it's really the most incredible process, one I don't altogether understand. The way the tiniest speck of an idea will spark and then somehow, whether consciously fueled or not, will quiver, persistently swell, to become a raging inferno which grows to consume every waking moment. And I am never anything less then awed and amazed when the dust of creativity has at last settled and a finished manuscript rests in my hands. Friends and acquaintances will often ask about the process of writing a book and I tend to answer in the vaguest of terms, not because I'm too puffed or pretentious to take the time or interest in detailing the drill, but quite honestly, I don't altogether understand how it works. It just does, not easily, but it does.

It takes me at least a year to finish a first draft of a novel -- not 700 page Stephen King size tomes, but rather half that size, something between 300-375 pages. Then comes the editing -- another year of rewriting, rewriting, disgust, agony, despair, only then does it begin to look like something of the picture I'd believed to exist at the start. I envy those writers who produce a masterpiece in the space of a few months -- or worse, weeks. How that works I can't imagine. Maybe it's because my mind is set at 33 and theirs at 78. My best friend and comrade of the keyboard, Janet, is a screenwriter and that girl is a whirlwind when it comes to producing excellent writing. Her mind is forever perking with new concepts as she piles up the pages -- good pages, great pages in fact.

Still, I've come to accept my slower pace as necessary for me. I am after all a self-admitted editing machine. I edit and edit until I feel the words coming to life and my characters breathing on the page and for me that takes some time. But there is a worthy reward when it's finished, a steady confidence that my work is pruned and polished, more or less ready to stand right up there in the shadow of the big boys.

Except that it's not. Because my first and finest story, carefully combed and well groomed novel, "The Last Summer", is still here waiting at the gate, ready to take off at a gallop but nowhere to run.

For the first ten years my submission efforts rewarded me with a vast and uninspired collection of rejection letters. I of course saved them in a bludgeoning pile in the event that there was ever a toilet paper shortage or trees became extinct. And I continued to keep the faith - rewriting, editing, querying, mailing, squandering my childrens college funds on stamps and manila envelopes, trusting and believing that God never plants a dream that isn't meant to be realized.

Fast forward several years, the rejection letters become much improved, even inspired -- hopeful on occasion. By a stroke of Divine intervention I have secured an honest, successful, and diligent agent, my novel is still being rejected, only now accompanied by encouraging comments, "rich, moving, powerful, superb writing" but nevertheless, "no place for this novel on our list right now."

And all at once I am Rip Van Winkle and it is somehow twenty years later - 2009. High time for this writer to shake, rattle, and roll.

And in the beginning...

Although you would have no way of knowing it from where you sit, I've already lost count of how many opening sentences I've typed and erased. Ridiculous, right? Pronounced myself a writer, then promptly lost the ability to compose a sentence. Maybe it's because it is fiction that opens my mind and leads my thoughts into the realms of inspiration and imagination, it's the challenge of honesty that finds me blank and struggling. Really though, I think it's the editing. I can't stop editing. I rewrite and edit everything that happens to leave my fingertips. Did I say everything? Because I really do mean everything: emails, notes to teachers, letters to Mom, my own signature because sometimes it just doesn't look right. I've even found myself editing telephone conversations in my head, hours after hanging up the receiver, and questioned whether I'm a total nut or maybe just a Writer.

I am one of those authors who loftily trace their designs to write novels all the way back to grade school. (Aka, a very long time ago.) Fourth grade to be exact, when I secretly went to work composing a shameless knockoff of Tom Sawyer, a book I'd just read and fallen madly in love with. I won't embarrass myself by revealing the completely ridiculous title I'd penned for my literary tour de force, just know that it was just as dreadful as you're right now thinking. Regardless, it was a pivotal moment when I gave up my long held dream to be an archaeologist. Traded pick-ax for pen and never looked back.

Okay, so now right there, that is a lie - the part about never looking back. Because if God is my witness, I've looked back. A bazillion times. Nearly broken my neck looking back and wondering what was wrong with my original dream to excavate Egyptian mummy tombs and chip ancient soil from dinosaur bones. Wondering, wondering, wondering why any sane person would willfully choose the wild white water rafting ride otherwise known as the writing life. Because as any scribe can tell you, "it's not just about the writing" as many of us optimistically, dreamily, and passionately believed at first glance. Writing, we soon discover isn't as uncomplicated as working diligently to get the words aligned, polished, and perfect. Not at all like the dedicated picture we envisioned when we first plucked a blank sheet from the pile and rolled it carefully between the rollers of our ancient manual typewriters (no longer chronicling our scribblings on yellow tablets tucked under the mattress, but now using the prestigious equipment of true authors). Because the truth of the matter is right there poised, ready to pounce, exposed from the moment we type THE END and confidently send our darlings out into the world. The truth that writing isn't simply about the writing, it's about strength, stamina, perseverance, and the ability to dodge bullets. And yet we do it. We hang on, determined to see it through because we must. Because there is no road heading back to the place we lived before we chose to write.