You know,
as a writer you have to take time out, get dressed up and go out and market
your books. Until I’d finished my third
book, I just hid my work in the closet and closed the door. I am just happy sitting at my computer in my
old robe with a cup of coffee.
It’s been about
nineteen years since I started writing.
Prior to that, I had just written checks, grocery lists and an
occasional greeting card. I had been
watching Oprah one day and she was talking about journaling and how benefiual this
was for your health, and how it put order in your life.
Now, I had
been a widow for several years, and for the world I put on a good front, but I
was still dealing with the silence in my life at home. She said go out and buy
a tablet of any kind and a pen and start writing. And so I did: I bought yellow
legal tablets and Pilot pens and wrote; I wrote about my sadness, my grief, my
loneliness, and ESPECIALLY my anger for being left in this situation. I had been so happy and now I had to fend for
myself.
I wrote and
rewrote, and over time I had a tall stack of tablets. I wrote about all my feelings as I sat at my
kitchen table. I did this for several
years, and it was in the days that I smoked, so the room was usually blue with
smoke.
----But you
know, I LEARNED something very important about myself, I learned to identify my
feelings and describe them and put them into words.
Over time I
started writing poetry. I found I liked
the rhyming of words and the cadence. I
still remember a few lines from my first endeavor, and it’s so little and
cute. It went like this; Love is a
whisper so close to my heart, a feeling so true to my soul. That’s all I can remember, but over time I HAD
accumulated quite a full book of my work.
One day, I
saw an ad in the Star and Tribune that asked for writers to join a class at the
Hennepin Vo-Tech. Well, I finally got up
my nerve to join. That first time, I
walked in on shaking knees and met Maureen LaJoy, the lovely teacher. And holding my papers in sweaty hands, I read
my poetry to her, and she loved it!
Well, I
went home on cloud 9. And from then on
in our writing classes, she would give me the ENCOURAGEMENT I needed to
continue. For a time then, I wrote my
poetry and thought about trying to get into the greeting card business. Then I
tried my hand at writing short stories, and there was one that I just couldn’t find
a good ending for, and my writing class bugged me to keep on writing and turn
it into book.
A book, I
said, are you nuts? Write hundreds of
pages? I can’t do that! But you know I
thought I’d just add another chapter.
Well, I just went on and on.
You know to
start a book, you need something to start off with, that will make YOUR READER
WANT to turn that all important FIRST page.
As I said,
I was a widow and one day as I was mowing the lawn, I saw a post from the ranch
style fence in the back yard was lying down on the ground. I stopped the motor and stood it up, but the
darn thing just fell down again. Then as I bent down to the ground TO PICK IT
UP again, I saw them, hundreds of big black carpenter ants EVERYWHERE! I was stunned
with horror. When I found them dining on the garage wall and the foundation of
the house, I called the exterminator. When he saw the huge invasion he said
jokingly, “LADY YOU BETTER BURN THEM!”
That was the scene I used to start my first book AND
OF COURSE I EMBELLISHED.
Read the
first page of Nightmares and Dreams
I finished
that first book and called it NIGHTMARES AND
DREAMS and put it away in the closet, and continued and finished another called
Tomorrow’s Rain and put that one away, AND finished
the third called Sunsets.
I DECIDED
THEN it was time to dust of the manuscripts that I had hidden in the closet. BUT,
I did this with hesitation, because now ---
I was opening up my heart and soul to the readers out there and
GIVING THEM PERMISSION to judge me. It was scary.
BUT IT WAS ALSO
MY AHA MOMENT—When I saw that first book with my name on the cover, I really
did feel for the first time—I WAS A REAL
WRITER!!
I build my
characters around people I’ve met, people I know, and of course I embellish. In
creating the Lindy Lewis character, I used bits and pieces of my thoughts, my
actions, fantasies and a nightmare or two.
Over time she has grown, and I’ve given gave her a lot of pizazz for
color and permission to roam the world, endowed her with intelligence and of
course, EMBELLISHED.
Lindy is a
brunette by birth, but sometimes a blonde, and sometimes a redhead. She has been known to completely change her
looks if she is starting over in her life. (A change in appearance is like a
good cry, she believes.) She thinks of
herself as worldly and always dresses with class.
Reed
Conners, the antagonist, is a blend of personalities A former lover from
college, now works as a special investigator for the same insurance company she
is insured with. Reed enters the picture to take a look at her claim and their
story begins. He dresses in pressed
jeans, Italian knit sweaters and western boots and only drinks top shelf.
My books take
place in the present day, when my two leading characters are both in their late
forties.
I would
like to read a couple of pages from the fourth in the series called SUDDENLY
SUMMER.
