Character

I’ve really been floundering. I’m sure that’s been obvious. Oh, I’ve stayed with my writing. I’ve worked on poems I’m proud of and, I suspect, are the best I’ve ever written. I’ve intended, for years, to put together a book of poems. I work on that each week, bit-by-bit, writing new poems, editing those I already wrote, organizing and planning the book, researching publishing companies and other options. I have always loved writing poetry and it does fill me with joy and purpose. It has been my writing lanyard. The thing that keeps me honest, true, and hanging on.

I’ve worked on this blog, producing at least two blogs a week, practicing the writing, the editing, doing some solid blogs, too. I’m proud of many of them, even when I read them, months later. And the act, the self-made deadline is great practice and it has really helped with my confidence. It was the best thing I could do when I was recovering. It was, for me, a way to restart.

But really, sometimes both just feel like treading water. I long to go back to writing novels. I’ve kind of sniffed around searching for a story, something that fires me up. That feeling has been terribly lacking since my diagnosis. Ok, all that did knock my feet out from under me for a while. I had to work on my health, recoup. And, thank goodness, I have. It took time and some fear and heartbreak, some losses but I’m feeling so good. I get tired faster, but the writing really does fire me up, gives me joy. Yet, I flounder. I haven’t been able to find a story to be passionate about. I search, I get little ideas, but they go nowhere, don’t give me that old flash I use to get.

Until…a generous comment left on my blog. From, of all people, Kaki Warner, author of Pieces of Sky, the book I have written about several times. A semi-famous writer (her words, not mine) A simple encouragement. Fifty some odd words. To me, someone she hardly knows. I had to write her back and thank her. Low and behold, she wrote another comment for me. This time, she gave me back a memory of where I’m going wrong in my ‘search.’

Concentrate on character. Simple.

But I forgot. I forgot how I wrote the eight novels I have filed away with characters that came first, before the story. Characters I loved, then, and still love and remember now. Character started it all. My stories always began with character. I ‘saw’ Elsa or Sooner, or Kate first, then the story followed. What a generous gift for someone Kaki Warner hardly knows. It opened me, somehow. Gave me back something I lost. The memory of my characters and their stories.
When I first got sick and we hadn’t yet figured out what was wrong I was struggling to edit a novel that I had felt had great promise.

As I sickened and the doctors got more puzzled and concerned I just couldn’t remember from one day to the next what I had edited or any thread of the story. I remember the horrible day I gathered all the research, chapters and edits of Elsa and the Tie-down Man, put them in a file box and stuffed the box on a top shelf in my basement.

I didn’t cry. I’d used up all the tears. I just put the novel away, along with all the others I’d written with such hope. I hadn’t looked at one page since. Had not one desire to do so…until Kaki’s reply.