Up and running again--with another piece of my novel!

I'm back!

After a week in which I was scrambling to replace a dead computer, and all of the files that first appeared lost forever, I am--this dismal, foggy, mid-winter morning--seated at the keyboard of my brand new computer and happily pecking away!

Although I did lose the most recent draft of my novel manuscript, there was little missing from the last one I managed to recover--just a few words and sentences that had once been "reorganized" and will now need to be tweaked anew (and who knows, maybe that's a good thing!)

My photos and music have all been re-installed. I'm still searching for my latest revision of a paper I wrote last year on the social construction of the environment in 19th century literature (I'm planning to submit it for publication), but if I have to rework it, all I've lost are changes in the citation style from APA to MLA. It's my least favorite thing to do, but it's not difficult.

As a way of sharing my joy and relief, I'd like to offer another short section of my novel draft. I'm currently working on the first 27 pages of the manuscript to send off to the annual Pacific Northwest Writers' Association literary contest, so what I'm posting below is the last few pages of that section.

I hope you'll enjoy it!

Chapter Four

The farmhouse looked pretty much as I remembered it—double hung windows and white clapboard siding. A widow’s walk circling the roofline. Maybe a bit more rundown—I couldn’t help but wonder if it was my imagination or was the front porch actually listing a bit? But really, what could you expect from a house built probably 150 years ago?

Climbing the front steps, I turned and surveyed the scene around me. All hints of the earlier thunderstorm were gone—there was truly not a cloud in the searing sky. Just as I remembered them, the fields surrounding the house and barn rippled with the verdant leaves of waist-high corn plants. I could almost hear cattle mooing in the barn, my Grampy and Uncle shouting at them to “git.”

I’m not sure how long I stood there, sodden with memory, before I heard a call from the end of the driveway. I looked up to see a red truck, its gray-haired owner smiling and shielding his eyes with one hand, leaning out his open window. He looked to be about the age as my dad.

“Hello there. You wouldn’t be Dean’s niece, would you? I heard you’d be coming sometime soon.”

“I am.” I wasn’t really sure who he was or how he knew who I was, but he seemed friendly enough. “I’m here for the summer. Getting the place ready to sell, I think.”

“Now that’s too bad. Platts have owned this place for a long time, ever since…” His voice dropped off and he seemed deep in thought. “But I’m forgetting my manners. I’m Alex… Alex Hikler. I live just up the road—next farm over.”

Walking toward the truck, I held out my hand.

“Nice to meet you, Alex. I’m Liz Benton.”

We spoke a few minutes, as he told me a bit about himself and the neighbors around us, and shared a few stories about my dad and uncle. I mentioned my tentative plans for the summer.

“That’s right, you’re a writer. Your uncle was pretty proud of you, you know?” Squinting at me from under his hand, he asked, “Are you going to write about someone from Iowa this time?”

I told him I was considering a story about the Amish, but didn’t have anything definite yet.

“We’ve got a lot of Amish around here. Good woodworkers. A couple of Amish boys helped me rebuild one of my barns last summer. I’ll tell you some stories about them one of these days, if you’re interested…”

I said I couldn’t wait to hear all about them, and told him to drop by anytime. He promised to look in on me in a few days, “just to see if you need anything,” offering me his phone number, “just in case.” Thanking him for his thoughtfulness, I waved as he drove off down the road. I stood a moment, just a bit overwhelmed by how warm and welcoming everyone had been so far. Alex had known my family since childhood, and was enthusiastic about sharing what he knew of our history, as well as helping me settle in any way he could.

I don’t think any of my neighbors at home would do that.

In that moment, I decided I liked Iowa. A lot.

Walking back up to the porch, I fished the key from my pocket and pressed it into the lock, my heart beating wildly with anticipation. I couldn’t wait to get inside the house and get started on my great adventure.

I’m not sure what I expected when I opened the door, but what faced me were spare furnishings, bare floors and white walls. Yes, the layout of the front room was pretty much as I remembered it, but all of my Great-Gramma’s homely touches— the gleaming wood of the dining table and sideboard, the Victorian-style sofa and chairs, and her prized mantle clock—had been replaced by a few pieces of what looked like standard rental furniture. I knew it was silly to expect it to look as it had when I was eight, but I couldn’t help feeling just a bit disappointed not to walk into the room I remembered.

Setting aside my disillusionment for the moment, I began to take stock of the house. Aside from the sparse furnishings the property manager said he’d left for me, the fragrance of still-curing paint filled the air—mingled with the citrusy smell of wood polish, and just a hint of bleach. Wood floors, though worn in spots, gleamed in the sunlight pouring through the windows. It was nearly as warm inside as outside, so I opened a few windows to let in some fresh air. With a ceiling fan in the living room, I figured it shouldn’t be too hard to get some air circulating.

I meandered the downstairs rooms, running my hand along door frames and the fireplace mantle before entering the kitchen. (Had it always been this small?)  It looked just as I remembered it, though, right down to the dip in the ceiling where it met the upper cabinets. In spite of the popcorn texture applied in the years since, its waviness was still visible. Grampy assured me such slopes in the ceiling were typical of old houses, particularly after being fitted with new fixtures.  When my five-year-old self feared the ceiling might tumble down, he’d told me, “Old houses were mostly built by hand, my little Lizzie. By hand and by love. New ones are made with power tools.” He’d smiled then, and told me not to worry. “The new ones might be straighter, but the love in this old house is too strong to let it fall.”

I hadn't really understood his words, but I knew he meant I’d be safe there. His love would always protect me.

I can’t believe how much I still miss him.

Walking toward the window over the sink to distract myself from the tears that threatened once again, I looked out across the drive to the acres of corn beyond. Before I was born, that field had belonged to my great-grandparents. I struggled to remember my family history, the year when the Platt family had come Manchester, but I drew a blank. I knew that information lay buried somewhere in a family genealogy chart—now in the care of my much-more-orderly sister—but for the moment, I had no way of knowing. As a child I believed this farm had always been ours. But I wanted to know the real story behind it.

Turning away, I made a quick tour through the rest of the house. A long narrow room stretched behind the front room. It looked like it might have once been two rooms, but I had no real memory of that part of the house, aside from the big fireplace at one end.  It didn’t appear to have been added on; maybe it had been used as an office, or storage? Walking back through the living room, I climbed the sharply-curved stairs to the second floor. I remembered playing dolls with Charlie right here on the landing, hauling out the huge wooden doll house Great-gramma kept for our visits.

Straight ahead was the door to the attic. I’d never been up there as a child, but I had a feeling if any of the furnishings I remembered still existed, that was where I’d find them.

The bedrooms looked just as I remembered—albeit much smaller. The largest one boasted a view across the neighboring cornfields, with a second window overlooking a large barn behind the house. In the smallest room, where Charlie and I had slept, I discovered a bird’s nest outside on the windowsill, entangled with the trumpet vine growing up the side of the house. I stood for a few moments, watching as a mother bird hopped into the nest carrying an insect in her beak, obviously on her way to feed her babies. The window itself looked original to the house—single-paned, wood-framed, with the sill low to the floor—and I listened hard, thinking I could hear the chirps of the baby birds inside.

Laughing a bit at my imaginings, I realized that I still had groceries in the car and I was ravenous. Aside from the iced mocha I’d grabbed in Waterloo, I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, and I was more than ready for some dinner. I trekked out to the car to fetch in the groceries, and deposited the bags on the counter. To my great relief, I discovered the refrigerator was in sparkling condition, and the rest of the appliances seemed functional, as well.

There were brand-new sheets and towels folded on the bed upstairs, cookware, flatware, and dishes in the kitchen—and hallelujah, even a dishwasher. If the water heater worked, I’d be a happy camper.

I made a mental note to send flowers to the property manager.

***

Later that evening before settling in for the night, I sat down with pen and paper once again—and wrote of my day

June 21^st - I can hardly believe it, but I’m actually here—sitting in the kitchen of Uncle Dean’s farm. This whole trip to Iowa happened so fast I never even had time to think about it. That’s probably for the best, though. If I’d taken the time to think, I probably wouldn’t be here now--and I’m so glad I am.

I had a long talk with Jack today—on the side of the freeway in the middle of a thunderstorm (I don’t think I’ll mention that to the girls, though. Daisy and Alice  worry about me enough as it is. They don’t need to wonder if Mom is losing her mind). He assured me a new story is out there waiting for me—I just need to hold on until I find it. Sitting here in this house after so many years, I can almost believe it's true. It feels so close I can almost touch it—maybe even right here within these four walls.

            ***

Too early the next morning, coffee mug in hand, I opened the door in the laundry room and stepped outside. The day had awakened fresh and clear, a breeze whispering through the corn even as it ruffled my hair. Tucking curls behind my ears to keep them out of my eyes, I looked up to admire the shimmering leaves of the surrounding stand of oaks. Watching as they seemed to shiver from a draft, I couldn’t help but wonder how long they’d stood here. Had they been here when Gramma Zizzie came? A British war bride, she’d followed Grampy home to Iowa, six months pregnant with my dad when she’d arrived on the farm to meet her new in-laws for the very first time. On the mantle at home, I have a black and white photo of her—young and smiling—sitting with Grampy under a tree. The tiny baby that was once my dad lay swaddled and sleeping in her arms, her blissful face dappled with the sunlight peering through the leaves. Was it one of these trees that shaded her that day?

There was something so steady and strong about trees. No matter what Nature throws at them—wind, storms, even the annual loss of their life-sustaining leaves—they stand in their places, year after year. Offering a silent testimony of strength and continuity in spite of trials.

There must be a lesson for me in there somewhere...

Moving on, I rounded the corner of the house, coming across an old pump, its red paint worn in spots, handle slightly rusted, bounded by a low fence. A mist of memory began to bubble the surface of my thoughts. It felt like just yesterday…

Two little girls, barely more than a year apart—the younger one, blonde; the older a brunette—arguing over who would get to ride the tractor when Daddy and Uncle Dean returned from the feed store.

“It’s my turn! You got a ride yesterday.” Charlie glowers at me, arms crossed tightly across her chest. “You always get to ride. It’s not fair…”

“Lizzie! Charlie! Can you come here, please? I need your help. It’s very important.” Grandma Zizzie’s voice cuts through the middle of our argument, just as I am about to deny Charlie’s claim.

“Coming, Zizzie!” We hurry back toward the house, and I lean over and hiss in Charlie’s ear, her wheat-color hair tickling my nose.

“It is too, fair. No one got a ride yesterday—and it is my turn!”

Normally, this would be where Charlie bursts into tears, wailing “Nooo, it’s not fair!” But Zizzie intervenes quickly, handing us a bucket, and assuring us “those poor thirsty cows by the barn have been waiting all day for a drink.”

Though we immediately run for the pump, Charlie and I are still squabbling over who will work the handle and who will hold the bucket. Eventually, though, we decide that we can set the bucket under the faucet so both of us can pump.

Our mother watches from the doorway, shielding her eyes in the bright afternoon sun. Calling out as we make our way toward the barn, she warns, “Be careful, girls! If you don’t slow down, you’re going to spill it all before you get there.”

I can still see her smiling as we picked our way ever so carefully over the gravel path and out toward the barn.

With the sloshing bucket held tightly between us, we are quickly surrounded by black and white cows, crowding the trough as we heft the bucket to pour out the water. I giggle with Charlie as we gingerly touch the cows’ wet noses, wrinkling our own over their “earthy” smell.

“Pee-yew! You stink,” Charlie shrieks, all the while patting the nearest cow firmly on the head…

My heart squeezed a bit with the recollection. In that moment, I realized that Zizzie had simply invented a chore to pacify two bickering little girls. The house had long had running water and I was pretty sure there had been a spigot down by the barn. We hadn't needed to go to all that work to bring water to the cattle—the few buckets we hauled couldn't have made much difference anyway—but it gave us something to do, making us feel a valuable part of life on the farm. It had been such fun to work the pump and watch the cows drink that we spent nearly every afternoon hauling buckets of water down that same path. At the end of our visit, when we were piling into the car to begin the long drive back home, I remembered Charlie crying, wondering who would take care of the “poor thirsty cows” when we were gone.

I continued my exploration down by the barn, but there were no longer any cows. Most likely, there hadn't been any since my uncle died. Heaving open the big sliding door, I could see a few hay bales piled inside and stacks of lumber leaning against the wall near the back, as if someone had paused mid-project, meaning to return to it later. Standing in the doorway, I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of the barn—stale air mixed with the fragrance of hay...

          Of home?

…

Death of a Computer

That which I feared has come upon me...

Yes, my well-used trusty computer--the one that got me through college and grad school--died this week. I started to worry about it a few months ago when it would sometimes seem to struggle with rebooting after resets. But it always came back on--eventually.

Until Wednesday.

I spent several days trying to cajole it back to life, but ultimately failing miserably. I did manage a few error messages, asking me to try rebooting it, but mostly I was just faced with a black screen--and the knowledge that my updated query letter and most recent draft of my novel were now lost to me forever.

Luckily, all of my pictures are in a cloud somewhere, and therefore safe. And I bought a tiny laptop last spring to accompany me on my travels (and "just in case"), so I am not without a computer. I even managed to track down a draft of my novel dated 12/22, so all that is missing is a "revisioning" of a problematic chapter (which still exists in its original problematic state), and some minor revisions in various places (which I'm hoping to be able to recreate). I have myriad drafts--some dating back to last spring--saved in Dropbox and Google Drive. Just not the latest one :(

So, lesson learned--and it's nowhere near as bad as it could have been.

Still...ALWAYS back up. ALWAYS save in multiple spots. And if you aren't sure whether you did or not...

Do it again!

So, back to work, I guess--but in the meantime, I'm shopping for a new computer.


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Transitions

Well, I've apparently done it! I've made the transition from university student to university employee.

While some of  UWT's "systems" still aren't entirely convinced of my non-student status, and my position is still missing from my name in the campus directory, I just completed my first week on what my husband likes to call my first "grown-up job." (Which is totally not true, by the way, but he thinks it's funny!)

Aside from a few hiccups--like taking days to get office keys, and the inability to create a shared id for one of my divisions because that system insists I am "still a student," in spite of my December 2014 graduation--it's been a great first week!

But transitions always bring challenges, don't they? It's just the nature of the beast.

Liz, the main character in my novel, is a woman in transition--but she doesn't want to be. She's being forced to come to terms with the fact that she can't hold on to her past and still live the life she wants to live. She has to let go of the way things used to be, and move on. And that frightens her.

Much more than I did when I started writing the novel, I understand that now.

I realized the other day that all of the emotional and mental upheaval I felt last fall--trying to figure out my next step after finishing my degree--was exactly what Liz was feeling. It's so much easier to cling to the familiar and to want to hold onto it even when it's taken from you (in her case, through her husband's death; in mine, through graduating)--but for all of us, the time will come when we simply have to let go of the past or we can never really live the life we have.

We have to make that transition--to grown-up jobs. To letting go of the past.

But we don't have to have it all figured out in advance. We just have to be willing to take a step--a first step. That first step isn't necessarily a forever commitment, but it gets you moving in the direction you want to go. And that's the important thing--you've been willing to move.

The truly amazing thing about this "insight" is that I can now take it back to my novel and give it to Liz.

I can't wait to see what she'll do with it!

On Writing Lists...

 As a life-long list maker, I write lists for nearly everything--things to do, grocery items. I will occasionally add things I've done that aren't on my list just to keep track of them.

If you could see my desk right now, you'd see several stacks of paper, all of which are of vital importance to me--as in life as I know it would end on some level if any one of them went missing. Most of those pieces of paper are lists.

This morning I discovered a list titled "Timeless Advice on Writing from famous Authors," and knew immediately it was a list that needed to be added to my collection. For those of you who are writers (or just want to know what famous writers consider worth knowing about their craft), I am linking it here.

Enjoy!

In the meantime, I will be chewing over some words of wisdom from author Ray Bradbury:

"A writer’s past is the most important thing he has. Sometimes an object, a mask, a ticket stub — anything at all — helps me remember a whole experience, and out of that may come an idea for a story. So I’m a packrat — I’ve kept everything I’ve ever cared about since childhood."

 

Something tells me his desk probably looked a bit like mine! (I wonder if he was a listmaker, too?)

 

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Happy New Year--sharing a bit of "A Continuous Present"

In honor of a bright shiny new year, I thought it might be fun to share a chapter from my novel "A Continuous Present" with all of you who actually read this blog. This is one of my favorite scenes, where Liz discovers that the story that Emily left behind in her diary isn't quite what it seems.

I hope you'll  enjoy it (and if you do, I'd love to hear from you!)

Chapter Twenty-Two

 

To my amazement, miraculously, the lid suddenly loosened and slid all the way open, revealing its hidden cargo: A stack of small paper booklets. Dozens and dozens of them. Booklets made of ordinary sheets of white writing paper, folded in half, and hand-stitched along the spine. Booklets in remarkably pristine condition, all covered in a small, neat handwriting that I instantly recognized. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I could hardly breathe.
― Syrie James, The Missing Manuscripts of Jane Austen

Pulling open the trunk, I considered the contents. I lifted the quilt off the top, still carefully folded right where I’d first found it. I would definitely take that home with me, hanging it on the wall somewhere in the house where it could be seen and appreciated, not folded away in the dark and forgotten. Setting it on the chair, I turned back to grab the books that had been stacked up under it.  Pulling them out one by one, I looked them over, wondering if one of them would make the perfect gift for Daisy and Justin—seed for a library of their own someday.

Unpacking all the smaller items under the quilt, I considered the day, just weeks ago, when I’d opened the trunk the very first time—finding Emily’s diary, opening the drawers and unpacking their contents…

Wait a minute!

 I’d never gotten that second drawer open. How could I have forgotten? I’d been so distracted once I'd found the diary, I’d never even tried a second time to open it.

Maybe I could get it open now.

Tugging on the handle, I could see it was still jammed.  A wad of paper in the drawer runner seemed to be holding it closed. Wondering if a knife might be able to reach inside and dislodge it, I ran to the kitchen and grabbed one.

It took a bit of finagling, but I managed to jimmy the drawer open with the knife, just enough to pull the papers that were blocking it out of the way. After that, the drawer pulled open easily—so easily, I decided the wad of paper must have been put there to keep the drawer closed and in its place inside the trunk. Since it was now so loose, I simply removed the drawer so I could look over its contents.

It was filled with a few loose papers covered with what looked like algebra problems, several small booklets that appeared to be sewn together by hand, and one volume that had a label inside the front cover proclaiming that it came from Congar’s in Manchester. Each was filled with writing—in the same hand that had transcribed the volumes of Emily’s diary. My heart began to race. Were these earlier diary volumes, maybe from Emily’s childhood? There was only one way I knew to find out.

A bit warily, I picked the hand-bound up pamphlets, aged and fragile without a protective cover. Several of the pages were difficult to read as the ink had faded or the paper was tattered. Still, I looked them over one at a time, examining them for dates or anything else that would offer a clue as to what they were. Nearly every booklet began with a date, just as the diary volumes had, so I sorted them into chronological order, leaving aside for the moment those few that looked to be a draft of a story, drawings, or a collection of poems. Leafing through them, I noticed that there was something familiar about several of the dates. The earliest began in 1858, just as the diary volumes had. It seemed to me that many of the months and days here were the same as those in some of the books I’d already looked at.

I hurried into the kitchen where I’d carried the diary while I was working on the short stories. Taking the earliest volume from the stack, I opened it to the first page and looked at the date.  March 29, 1858. Returning to the living room—diary in hand—and the mound of booklets on the floor next to the trunk, I picked up the first in the stack.  It began with the same date. What was this? Were these copies of the larger diary volumes—or could they be original writings? Had Emmie had begun her diary in these handmade books, only later copying them into a format that was more likely to last? It made sense.

What an amazing find this was. If these were indeed earlier texts, I was curious to see whether there were differences between these and the later copies. From my own experience as a teenage diarist, I remembered that I had more than once vehemently scribbled out embarrassing lines when I reread some entries months or years later. Once or twice I’d even torn out pages to avoid embarrassing my future self with what I then viewed as childish declarations of undying devotion to someone whose name I barely even recognized. I had occasionally “made a good story better,” recording things as I wished they’d been, not as they actually happened. Even as an adult, I knew that I had not always written the whole truth of a situation, because it was simply too hard to face—even in a book I kept only for myself. A diarist always chooses what she will write.

Could Emily, just like nearly every other person who ever kept a diary, have taken a bit of artistic license with her words, altering her life story in some way—maybe to erase things she might have considered distressing, or to portray herself in a different light? Had she created a picture of herself in her earlier writings that she later wanted to alter in some way?

How would I ever know for sure?

It made the most sense just to begin at the beginning. With the first volume and the booklet that began with the same date open in my lap, I started to read the very first entries to see how they compared.

March 29, 1858 was the first date in both versions.  The paper copy was a bit hard to read in places, but except for what appeared to be a few inconsequential grammatical changes—cleaned up syntax and spelling—they looked pretty much the same. If I was going to recopy my diary fifteen years later, I’d correct my errors, too.

The second entries in both copies held a few more differences, with more detailed descriptions of her day’s activities in the bound volume version than in the booklet. There were also a few small changes in who she spent her time with on her visits. The booklet had her having dinner with “Uncle Horace Garlick”…then calling on Ann Salsbury. The bound version had her calling on “Mrs. Green,” then staying “with Lucy Ann to dinner. At two p.m. started to go to Uncle Marcus’…arriving at four o’clock. Tired.” Small changes, and likely unimportant, but she’d clearly done a little editing to one version or the other.

The two versions continued on this way, with mostly tiny differences between them, until an entry on April 20, 1858. The paper booklet read as follows:

Tuesday: Did not rise very early this morning. Emma Culver came after some flower roots. Harriet went home with her, got some flower seeds, and Hattie Hall. While we were eating dinner it rained. Hattie got up from the table and ran all the way home because she was afraid of the rain. Got as wet as a drowned rat. After tea, Fanny Brower came to go home with her mother. Done a little of everything. It is quite lonely now that Pa and Edna are both gone. At home.

It read like a pretty ordinary day—just a list of things she had done. It was a bit odd to read that Hattie ran all the way home in the rain because she was afraid of it, but some people are funny (or maybe Hattie was only ten years old; that could explain a lot). When I turned to the bound copy of the diary for its version of the day’s events, though, part of it was like reading about another day altogether.

After beginning the entry as she had the other, somewhere in the middle the tale took a sharp turn, becoming another story altogether—one I had come to know pretty well.

Last Christmas & New Years I attended Cotillion parties at Canandaigua with Sylvenus Hamlin. Lizzie wants him pretty badly…

Well, that certainly sounded familiar. Emily had apparently added this little plot point about Venus and Libbie to her diary at some point in time. But the real question was, since both entries had the same date, which was the original? Could she have made one version to share with her sisters or friends, perhaps—and another for only herself? And if that was the case, which version was more likely to be the truth?

I spent the rest of the night reading through the booklets, comparing them with the bound volumes—but too caught up in Emily’s revisions to do much more than scribble notes while I read. Luckily, they only covered about eight months in 1858 or I could have been on this mission for weeks. With a growing list of differences I had discovered stacking up in the journal that Will had sent, I was left with the feeling my treasure hunt had evolved into an examination of the evidence in a mystery novel.

Just as the horizon was beginning to lighten, I opened the last book I’d found in the drawer, a store-bought accounts book from Congar’s. Written across the top of the first page was a single word, References, followed by a note from Emily herself, no doubt written to remind herself or any future reader exactly what her purpose was in this book.

To day is the sixth of May 1873. I have my diary written in small books & commence to copy it in this book. It almost causes a tear to start to when I look back to the commencement of my keeping a history of my life. Aye, 15 years ago. I only regret that I did not commence as early as when I was a merry school-girl of fifteen.

Here, written in Emily’s own hand was the answer to the question I asked when I first discovered the alternate version of her diary: had Emily rewritten her life in some way? Up until this moment, it certainly appeared so, but I couldn’t say for sure. How would I ever know which version had come first, or why the various volumes didn’t match up? Yet here, Emily herself had supplied the answer.

She had rewritten her life.

Oh not in every detail, but in those which for some reason mattered to her, even fifteen years after the fact. But that still left me with one question, perhaps the most important one of all.

Why?

Suddenly the dream I’d had after I wrote the account of Emily’s trip from Michigan to Iowa came roaring back. How angry she’d been with me, accusing me of revising her life to suit my purposes. It made me laugh now, realizing that what she’d accused me of in my dream was exactly what she’d done herself.

It made me wish I could talk to her, to ask her why she’d done it. To hear her answers face to face. With only her diary in front of me, I could imagine that she’d wanted to leave a different image of her life for her children, for posterity. Her life had not turned out the way she’d hoped, that much was clear. Her long hoped-for loving marriage turned eventually to a nightmare. The things she was raised to believe were a woman’s greatest honor became ashes in her mouth, souring her on everything to do with her husband. Yet those values still fought for preeminence in her identity.

But all this was simply conjecture. I could only guess at why she felt the need to polish her image painted within the pages of her diary—I would never really know.

Abruptly, in the midst of all my supposition, I had an idea. A conversation. Why couldn’t I have one—with Emily? In my dream, she’d had the chance to speak her piece, begging me to listen to her story without judgment or embellishment. Maybe it was time for us to talk to each other.

But how?

In the space of a single heartbeat, it all became crystal clear. Snatching up a pen and the diary that Will sent me, I flipped to the next blank page and smiled to myself. I knew exactly how to begin.

It was time for Emily and me to have a little chat.

***

Dear longsuffering reader, I can only guess what you must be thinking right now: “This is becoming ridiculous.” Emily is long since dead and buried—and you’re right…she is. However, I am a fiction writer--it’s my job to imagine and invent improbable actions. To create events that didn’t happen—or even those that cannot happen—and help you believe in them, even if just for a little while. 

I think it’s time for me to do just that.

But I need to you to buy it, to hang in there with me while I do my best to uncover Emily’s truth. Can you do that? Can you listen, without judgment while we get to the truth—the veritas—at the base of her story? If you can, maybe we can all find something that we’re looking for…Emily, myself—and maybe even you.

It’s time for me to tell you a story…

Want to hear more? I'm working on making that possible! :)

Writing the New Year

When I was about 11 years old, I started keeping a diary. Most of what I wrote covered inanities such as where I went shopping with my mom, movies I watched, or even things I learned in school (on April 3, 1968 I apparently read a book about the 4^th dimension, relativity, space warps, “and all sorts of things”). But in addition to the fascinating facts of one child’s life, I had a new year’s tradition: every January 1^st, I would practice writing the new date on a page in the front of my diary.

I remember being captivated at watching the decade rollover from the 60s to the 70s (I was too young to be aware of the 50s to 60s change), and even looking down the road thirty years to the arrival of the year 2000 (when I would be SO OLD!). I can hardly believe another 15 years have passed since the non-event of Y2k.

My life has been a long series of changes since 2000. I was the mother of young (barely) adult children then—a year later I would become a first-time grandmother. I stayed busy running a pretty successful decorative painting business, and was having the time of my life traveling with my husband—we took trips to Hawaii and Mexico, and sailed along on Caribbean, Transatlantic and Panama Canal cruises. The grandchildren kept coming (I’m now up to nine!), and life was good!

Then in June 2007, my husband retired. In 2008, the economy crashed and took my business with it. I spent the next 12 months trying to figure out what to do with myself—and then in September of 2009, I took a deep breath and plunged back into a college classroom.

Since then, I’ve finished my BA, gotten an MA, traveled to Europe twice,  presented my work at conferences, traveled across the country to Iowa to do research, had papers published, and wrote a book. 

The tools of my trade have morphed from paint and brushes, to textbooks and papers, to words scribbled in notebooks or keyed into computers.

But this morning I realized something: Writing has always been beneath it all. From the words I penned into diaries and notebooks when I was a child, to journals I’ve kept as an adult and the detailed records I kept of clients, paint colors and design plans, and of course the book I’m currently revising—keeping track of my life through the written word has always defined me.

As I start another phase of my life in 2015, writing will again lead my way. I won’t be writing papers for classes anymore since my schooling (at least for the time being) is done, but I’ll definitely be exploring a lot new uses for it in my new position. I’ll also be working to find a publisher for my book.

But before I do anything else, I think I need to practice writing the new year:

2015, 2015, 2015, 2015, 2015, 2015, 2015, 2015, 2015, 2015, 2015, 2015, 2015, 2015, 2015, 2015…