Last Year’s Calendar

     Yesterday I finally put up a new calendar.  Thumbing through 2012's, it looked like I didn’t do anything but go to a few doctor’s visits.

      There was nothing on last year’s calendar about the hours I spent in my study reading and writing.  I read sixteen fiction novels and two books on the craft of writing.  (That’s probably a drop in the bucket compared to my friends in my writers group.) I did journal quite a bit.  I attended a religious book study during the first of the summer which required a lot of bible reading.  When it was finished, I joined another bible study. (I should put The Bible on my have-read list.)  There were two semesters of the MTSU Writer’s Loft this year, sending in three packets of original material for critique. During the summer, I finished the first draft of my first novel, created a working plot sketch for it, and started on the intensive revision process. 

     Nothing noted on my calender about my incredible decision to withdraw from a church I have gone to for the last twelve years.  Or the grief I felt. 

     Nothing about telling my life story to a room full of anonymous friends who are like me, recovering from codependence.  The calendar made no mention they took me out to dinner afterward to celebrate my life or that I had known these lovely friends for years.  The Wednesday night meetings weren’t marked either.

      There wasn’t a reference of getting the deck renewed and listening to the construction noise all day or gathering the courage to tell the contractor he messed up something or painting the front porch or getting two new windows installed because of sun damage.  Or the hours I spent on the lawn mower. 

     The only notations that showed I struggled with acute knee pain were two doctor's appointments; the twelve weekly routine physical therapy visits I didn't need to post.  There’s nothing about my new habit first thing in the mornings—riding an exercise bike for an hour or going swimming twice a week.   

     There was a long marking-out line from 8/17--8/24, but it said nothing about the beauty of our Maine Coast vacation.  I saw the tail of a whale, a bald eagle, and ate lobster.  I fell in love with Maine.  I fell in love with my husband again, too.  And, God gave me the most beautiful sunset as a going away present the morning we left for home.

     I marked the dates of the writers group I attend, but nothing about the first, third, and fifth Thursdays of each month described how incredible friendships grew, or even that I became daring enough to read the beginnings of my work.  Nothing on my calendar showed the impromptu Facebook insomnia nightly chats with these friends who left me giggling and less lonely.

     Monthly notations for my dog's heartworm pills prompted me to keep her healthy, but it certainly didn’t show how many times she nosed me to let her out, or when she chased rabbits and didn’t come back when I called, or when she stayed right next to me mostly throughout the year while I wrote, while I painted, while I watched TV, while I read. 

    This morning, I realized I didn’t utilize the calendar last year.  I must have just been living too much.   How about your calendar?  Did it minimize your daily living?  I'd love to know.

Blackbirds

            They are complex characters.

             I guess I'm really pushing the envelope when all I have to blog about is birds.  But, I hold a grudge against a whole flock of blackbirds.  I just washed off the driveway where they congregated in one big group poop.  Those birds have no dignity! 

            They bombed my car a couple weeks ago.  Little terrorists with feathers.

            When my husband and I went to Jamaica, we took a nature tour around the resort where we stayed.  The guide/maintenance boy pointed out all sorts of plants naming their botanical names.  Then he told us their Island names.  I wish I could remember some the exotic Island names for things I recognized like yarrow or mother-in-law tongues.   The Jamaicans have a different sort of name for almost everything.  But luckily, I remember the Island name for a blackbird. 

            “See that black bird up there in the tree?” The guide said.   He pointed to a lone scout clucking and whistling to its buddies in other trees. 

            I wonder what they call it here, I thought, getting primed to go home and tell everybody.

            “We call that bird a Black Bird,” said the Jamaican with a big smile.   

            Black Birds turn into jazz musicians in the Caribbean.  Some of their songs sound like the plop of water drops and the chatter of porpoises.  On dayshift, they play their fluty music and then just give it up to the crocking frog performers when the sun goes down.  I love shimmery iridescent blackbirds down near the equator.  Up here in Middle Tennessee, not so much.

            I have Native American blood in me; that may be the reason I want to know what animal totems mean.  Blackbirds are in my yard nearly year round; surely their presence means something.  So I Google them.  Blackbirds bring creativity, intuition and a grounding connection with self.  How cool is that?  They are full of fertile shit!

            I want characters in my book to be like blackbirds, multifaceted.  They are shitty, beautiful, mob-like radicals with laid-back music skills.   I hate them.  I love them.  I need them.  That’s what creating a complex character is like, living with blackbirds.  

Happy writing,

Karen

Blog Darkness

            My last post a few weeks ago pronounced a grain of my reason for starting this blog, to tell my personal truth.  I made a commitment to myself to say the truth as I see it. And, then I stopped posting. 

            What a laugh, huh?  I tell you to expect honesty from me, and then I turn into a turtle with my head tucked ever-so-safely inside.

            Here are some honest-to-goodness things that are going on with me lately. 

            I finished the second trimester with the MTSU Writer’s Loft.  I plan to take the last course for my certificate in September.  My mentor, Charlotte Rains Dixon, has been just awesome.  I have close to two-hundred-and-fifty pages written of my first draft.  I am amazed how much going to the Loft has helped me—a person who started out with writer’s block.

            I still haven’t finished my first draft.  But it is so close, I can envision the ending.  Actually, the other night I saw the most magnificent sunset as I thought about my book’s last scene.  I guess all sunsets are beautiful, but some are monumental.  I haven’t seen one as incredible in twenty years with the orange, blue, and purple colors arranged in such a way I honestly felt I could hear it sing.  The only one I can compare it to was when Alan and I lived in Decatur, AL.  We were dating then and had gone for a walk on the shore of the Tennessee River.  The sunset that night transported us to a serene magical place where tree stumps in the water were black against a maroon sky.  I’ve always felt that particular sunset brought something unlimited to our relationship, like we walked through fairy dust.  I hope the one I saw the other night will bring just as much good to my book.   

            I am treating my family with love, kindness, and hopefully healthy boundaries.  There have always, always been conflicts in my mind around my love for my original family.  One of the promises of Co-dependents Anonymous is “I learn that it is possible for me to mend—to become more loving, intimate, and supportive.  I have the choice of communicating with my family in a way that is safe for me and respectful of them.”  This is such a grace-of-God thing in my life.  

            Easter came late for me. At the first of this year, I was confused by how much my father’s suicide and the religious holiday of Jesus dying for my sins had blended.  This past year I worked with a therapist when I realized the locked-box grief of his death was a major part of my writer’s block.  The therapy work brought up another layer of grief.  I made huge strides in breaking open the writer’s block, but confusion weaseled itself into my feelings about God, about my church life, and about Easter. 

            http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5972462272937973038#editor/target=post;postID=7075698488284050629

            In one of my CoDA meetings, and in the above blog, I said that I wanted to give up Easter for Lent.  A trusted friend really helped me with my feelings about Easter.  She asked if I knew the meaning for Lent and for Easter, that Lent was a time of grief and that Easter became time of renewal.  In my confusion, I tried to give up the perennial qualities of God, and hold on to the grief.  I was thankful for the courage of my friend.  I am thankful for my own courage to hear her.

            There are still issues for me around my church life, but I am seeking guidance. 

Much love,

Karen

Truth—What is it?

            Last September in a presentation on blogging and websites, we were encouraged to write a manifesto.  At the time, I decided my declaration of purpose would be to write the truth.  But, (imagine a manure-eating dog-like grin on my face at this moment.) I forgot all about writing a manifesto and just started blogging helter-skelter.  Today, I realized the manifesto for writings by karen will be just that—anything goes.  I knew now I wanted to include the important things in my life, my writing life, my family, my recovery, my walk with my Higher Power.

            So what is writing my truth?  There’s no wonder my brain has taken a few ninety-degree turns since I started blogging and writing the first draft of my novel.  My truth changes from time to time; sometimes it changes from minute to minute. 

            A new truth I have learned is I can't tell another person how or what to feel.  If I am capable and have the right of choosing how I feel about something, then who am I to dictate another’s feelings?  I mean think about it; don’t you hate for someone to tell you not to feel sad when you feel sad, or that you shouldn’t be angry when you’re clearly angry?  (When I am pissed off and someone tells me to calm down, I just get more pissed.) Wouldn’t you rather they just listen?  But still it’s hard sometimes to keep from telling a person she or he ought not to feel something when I can see they are in pain.  I understand now when I do relapse into trying to control another it’s because I feel uncomfortable and powerless over their feelings.  Coaching another person how to feel or not to feel is controlling in order to make me feel better.  (Just a note to parents, I am talking about adult-to-adult relationships.)

            But will such a personal truth of not controlling others get in the way of writing fiction or non-fiction?  I mean, my goodness, when I do that god-like thing of creating characters (who feel like real people in my head as I think about their positive and negative traits and how they might react to this or that) and set them up to have conflict and tension—that’s not just telling them how to feel, but making them feel it. 

            I have mentioned in the post Commitment about my going to Codependent Anonymous (CoDA) for several years.  This recovery group has taught me another amazing truth—there is a God and it isn’t me.  Actually, getting back to the idea truth changes, it makes sense to me my changing truth comes from my limited vision of the nature of God.  My human understanding of a Higher Power is restricted, but finally now it takes in the idea of inclusion.  My truth and your truth may not be the same, but our kaleidoscope truths are all in the arms of something bigger and better than any person.

            I would love to hear what saying, feeling, or writing the truth means to you.

Love,

Karen 

Bathrooms

            Today my writer’s companion instructs on the importance of setting, especially those places so known we look past and consider them insignificant.  But in good writing everything, I am painfully learning, should import at least one or two points in a story; description of setting should tell us something about the character or plot as much as paint a word picture.  Below are two bathroom descriptions that used in this exercise:

            In the sixties, teenaged girls travel home in Northern Alabama from a football game.  Between towns the road darkens into farmland.  Only the full moon lights the highway.  A shy red-haired girl who rides in the backseat needs to pee and thinks she started her period.  The driver, a blond born-again Christian can’t find a bathroom. Nothing is open now. All the girls laugh except the redhead.  She’s in pain.  Finally having mercy, the driver cuts her green mustang, fastback, onto a red chert road toward a farm house; the gravel road ends at a wooden shed.  The redhead crawls out of the backseat, making quick high steps to the outhouse.  The barnwood door creaks on rusted hinges; so does the floor boards. Inside, she hears crickets, frogs and giggles.  The rough wooden commode rim stabs her narrow rear.  Yes, she’s ok, she answers, and yes, she will hurry.  There’s no paper. Seems everyone needs a turn says the slutty brunette cheerleader as she lights a cigarette; the smoke waffles into the shed.  No, don’t hurry; says the blond, we can wait.  More giggles.

***

            The telephone hung on the wall with a chewed-up twenty-foot cord.  For privacy even though no one was up at midnight, the young girl stretched the phone into the bathroom across the hall and called her boyfriend.  A brass chain locked the door. The room ran rectangular, long and narrow.  A linen closet housed towels, sheets, some feminine products used by her mother and sister, her father’s razor everyone used and lied about, and way in a back covered-corner were matches the girl hid to light stolen cigarettes.  The phone didn’t quite reach to the white commode, so she stacked the towels on the floor to sit on, and used the sheets to cover chilled legs.  The window air-conditioner in kitchen blasted artic winds down the hall just outside the bathroom door.  She wished to get closer to the clawfoot tub, crawl in there, smoke her cigarette, and maybe read a book, but instead she rested her feet on the black and white vinyl floor and listened to the phone’s buzz as it rung over and over.   

***

            What are some of the settings you take for granted, a car, a kitchen, a deck, an elevator?  Here in my part of the south, subways are a novelty, but we have buses, and van pools.  See if you can describe people, time, and plot with the setting.  I would love to hear what you think about using setting to drive along your story. 

Karen

Weeding Is Like Writing

        

           Spring come early this year.  Yesterday, we finally mow and trim the yard.  If it hasn’t been raining, the mower has had problems.  “Don’t spray Round-up along the fence,” I tell my husband.  “You’ll kill my daylilies.”  He gives me a look of disbelief.  I’m not sure if he didn’t believe anything could survive under all those weeds, or if he didn’t believe I would get my happy butt outside to pull weeds.

            Have you ever heard of chickweed?  It grows in the spring like a carpet, covering everything.  That’s been my chore today, pulling up the chickweed.  

            I’m not so great at squatting down, so I start out on my knees.  When my back gives out, I find a long-handled garden cultivator in the shed and use it like a rake.  After a while, I catch my rhythm of rolling the chickweed forward like a blanket and then lifting it into the wheel barrel.  And I get lost in thought.  Naturally my thoughts are about writing. 

            Weeding is a process of uncovering what lies beneath.  While I clear away unwanted plants (weeds are plants, aren’t they?  I’m pretty they are not just little extraterrestrial plagues, although I can be wrong.), I find my daylilies just barely poking out of the green carpet.  I find grubs, earth worms, a whole farm of ants (that isn’t such a fun experience), and some petunias that have come up from last years’ flats.  I see oak seedlings with the acorn shell still attached.  I find that some of my bugleweed has died, but that all of my hostas have survived the winter and even multiplied.

            I think writing is a lot like a good weeding process, especially in the area of journaling or writing the first draft of a story. With journaling, I write what I feel about at that moment.  Sometimes it surprises me when I process my emotions.  I realize when I have been looking to others to validate me rather than looking to my Higher Power and my own self-approval.  I figure out why I feel aggravated or angry after I’ve spent some time thinking on paper.  

            Many times the metaphor of weeding is used for the editing process, but strangely, today my weeding and writing thoughts are more about discovery than revision.  Maybe that is because I am on my first draft of my first book.  Right now I am learning as I write what my story is really about. 

            Weeding and writing have something else in common.  They both require regular attention.  If I ignore my yard, I know that I will have a multitude of weeds threatening to overcome my perennials and annuals.  (Believe me, it happens quite a bit in my yard.) If I ignore my writing, things like continued procrastination, unawareness, and even shame mount up.  I miss out on whole new worlds and insights if my writing stagnates.       

            A mentor from the MTSU Writers’ Loft, Terry Price, compares writing with feeding goats. 

 http://www.terryprice.net/Terry_Price/Blog/Entries/2012/2/20_Feeding_the_goats.html

            What about you?  Do you have a comparison for writing with something else in your life?  I’d love to hear it.

My Best,

Karen

   

Stuck In Some Childhood Memories

           After my last post about commitment, I turn a page.  I figure if I keep drowning in my dreadful feelings no one will want to read my blog.  There’s that thought, too, rattling away in my skull that tells me if I talk about Easter and suicide too much a white van will drive up and try to fit me for one of those jackets where the sleeves tie in the back. 

            A writing companion suggests reaching back into your childhood for memories that stand out in your mind to write about.  Here are some ideas for me to explore.

            I got locked in an outhouse once when I was a child.  We went up to my second cousin’s house on a mountain in north Alabama.  Her house didn’t have indoor plumping, so when I had to pee, I was shocked that I had to go outside.  I traipsed off behind the house and went inside a wooden shack where a hole was cut into a wooden box big enough to sit on.  The door, I guess, had a habit of flying open in the wind, so not only was there a latch on the inside for privacy, there was a small rectangular piece of wood on a nail on the outside that turned horizontal to keep the door shut when no one was in there.  The wind (or my sister) turned it sideways just after I went inside.        I    was     in      there      f-o-r-e-v-e-r       before   Mom    come   looking   for   me.

            I think I was six or seven when I got electrically stuck to a water faucet at an almost finished new house that Daddy built.   The electricity wasn’t ground yet, and when I went for a drink of water from the faucet outside, the electrical current grabbed a hold of me and wouldn’t let go.  Mom rescued me again by slapping me away from the handle.  My hair stood out like a sizzling-crown for hours. 

            When I was four, (I’m trying to bury this memory deep into the middle of this post) I got my tongue stuck to the freezer part of the refrigerator.  Mom came into the kitchen to find the fridge door open, my tippy-toed feet on one of the shelves propping me up as my tongue stretched out along the frosted ice.  She panicked and ran her hand under my tongue, leaving lots of it behind.  My dad kept asking, “My God, Karen, what were you thinkin’?  But, I couldn’t answer.

            When I was eight, I jumped, leaped actually like a ballet dancer, over our old floor furnace and got a two-inch wood-floor splinter stuck in my foot.  Mom and I didn’t realize how deep it went until I got blood poisoning and had to have surgery.

            At fourteen, I dropped a carton of Cokes, the returnable glass kind, on my right foot.  The glass cut the main artery.  I was with my sister then.  She wanted to take me home to Mom, but finally realized I might bleed to death and took me to the hospital.  I think it was a tough choice for her.

Love,

Karen

Commitment

            This past week my mind’s ruminated on that word, commitment. What is it?  How do I balance it with my own needs?  What is healthy and what isn’t?  How does it fit in with God, with my writing, and my friends?

            I have to say that in my life, I’ve had all sorts of commitment-phobias.  I got married too young.  During my marriage I went to college; I changed career directions twice and still got a degree in something that I never used afterwards.  After my divorce, I stayed single for fourteen years before re-marrying because being committed just scared the hell out of me. 

            What does commitment mean?  Two definitions are that it is a pledge to do something and that it is a state of being bound emotionally or intellectually to an ideal or course of action.  In the last eighteen years, I have continually pledged to live my life with a man that changes from time to time.  I say continually most sincerely; marriage is a long effort.  In the last twelve years, I have lived in one place as a homeowner and have been seriously committed to getting that mortgage paid off.  For ten years or so, we have been members of a church.  Eight years, I’ve been going to codependence anonymous meetings and working the steps.   I’ve worked numerous jobs, but work has been a steady effort.  So I suppose I have gotten over my fear of commitments, somewhat.

            Writing for me has never been about commitment until this past year when I quit my regular job and started the first draft of my novel.  It has been about something as basic as breathing.  I have always used the action of pen-to-paper as a method of meditation, prayer, figuring out what was in my head, making a decision, putting off a decision, coping with grief, and expressing my joys.  You name it, writing has been my friend.  But now that I am devoting more of my life to writing, I’ve found that my commitment issues of youth seem to surface.  I have a god-zillion doubts about my abilities and wonder if anyone would be interested enough to read my work. 

            Doubt has been my biggest component of quitting something.  Those doubts have now surfaced in my church attendance.  I am in grief about church and the Easter season.  This is a hard time of the year for me, but I’ve usually been able to just go along.  I’ve either been very busy at church during Easter, or I’ve been very quiet.  I haven’t openly revealed to them that my father killed himself so close to Easter, although if they have read my blogs, they know that now. There’s a thing about grievers-of-suicide, they don’t open up much about that subject, especially not to church friends.  It’s too easy a fertile ground for human judgments.  And there’s that crying thing that happens with grief—the uncontrollable shit that scares the life out of me.

          I think maybe my new writing direction in life has cracked me too open.  Lately, I’m too vulnerable in church during Easter.  Realistically, I want to give up Easter for lent; actually, I just want to give it up for good. I’m not very good at giving myself permission, I guess.  I wonder how well my Christian friends would think of me after hearing that decision, even if it is for my own self-care.  The idea that Jesus died for me isn’t uplifting; it’s terrifying. 

            Amazingly, my relationship with God hasn’t been affected by my fears.  I believe God loves me with whatever decision I make on Sunday mornings, and doesn’t pet me piteously on the head as if I were just a poor lost soul that can’t get over her father’s death or the post-trauma of it. 

            My soul is secure with God, as I understand God.  Part of turning over my life and will to God has to do with being true to myself.  I believe God’s will for me is to be easy with myself in my grief and worship God however I can.  God’s big enough not to take offense that I don’t want to celebrate the death of Jesus.  Worrying what others think of me in this issue is unhealthy. 

            But  I have to say, I’ll be glad when Easter is over.

Love,

Karen

My Muse is a Powerful Creature

            Down the road and around a true ninety-degree-curve there is a cattle and horse farm.  They have a big sign up that says something about Horse Boarding and Riding Lessons.  I love to take afternoon walks in that direction; it’s so peaceful.  And plus, that farm holds one form of the spirit of my muse. 

            Last year when I went to my first writing certificate program trimester, we were asked to describe our muse.  That was an easy description then.  She was a gray mare with powerful legs, barrel-chested and had a large, lovely head.  I knew this because the week before my husband and I spent a few days at a little ranch style bed and breakfast up near Land Between The Lakes in Calvert City, Kentucky.  The horses out in the pasture came quickly for horse treats that the owner of the place left in the room.  I hadn’t been around horses in nearly 30 years, and the desire just to touch a horse’s velvety nose ran through me like lightning.  

            “Hold your hand flat when you feed one,” I said, showing off my vast knowledge of how to feed and pet a horse to my husband.  I put my face up next to the gray and inhaled all the molasses and grass smells that surrounded her face.  This is what I had been waiting for all summer—just a chance to be with the horses.  It’s why I booked this particular B&B.

            “They love for you to blow in their noses, too,” I said, as I blew gently into one nostril. The horse tossed her head up and down once as if to say yes.  

            Then all of a sudden, it sneezed so hard that my face, glasses, throat, and shoulders dripped globs horse snot.  I pulled my glasses off immediately; I couldn’t see through so much slime.  I think I said, “eewww,” but maybe I just thought it, felt it. 

            Without my glasses, I just saw forms.  Looking over at my husband, his form was bent completely over.  “Your hair flew straight back!” He said, gasping for air.  I heard more laughter out of him than I had in the eighteen years we had been married.  Did I mention that this was an anniversary trip?

            So that weekend, a horse showered me with enough snot to wipe away my writer’s block of nine years.  I had a clean slate, tubua rasa.  I can’t say the same for my clothes or glasses.  It took a while to get the goo out. 

            I started writing my first novel that trimester.  I’m still s l o w l y working on it.  Maybe I need to go find another gray mare.

Karen

What I Believe

             I didn’t get a chance to write my journal pages this morning.  I woke up thinking about a scene that I had trouble with yesterday and figured I’d better get down on paper what came from my subconscious before it evaporated.  Usually in the mornings, I will get a cup of coffee and sit with a spiral notebook and just start writing.  I’ve done this morning journaling since I read Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way.  “Morning pages” she calls them. 

            The things I write in those pages are monotonous but sometimes enlightening.  One thing I try to do is to jot down my feelings at the moment, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual feelings.  That’s what I am, you know, a person with all those feelings.  The trouble with me is that a lot of times I can’t identify them.  I don’t have a lot of trouble understand what is going on with me physically; if my head hurts or my feet are cold, I know it.  But if my emotional feelings are hurt, I have the habit of denying them.  Sometimes, I hide from the idea that I feel disconnected from God.  Sometimes I hide from everything, isolate and zone out so much that I don’t know what’s going on.  It takes a lot of work to become self-aware.

            Lately, I’d say for nearly a month now, I have been writing daily planned to-do lists in my journals.  Over the weekend, I read about three weeks worth of posts and realized that my plans and intentions are being written, yet, I’m not acting on them.  I have been getting lost in the day, filling my time with writing on my novel, eating, and watching TV.  After reading those posts, I realized something. I have been adjusting to a new way of life and I’m not so sure of the way.

            Over the course of the month, I have had too many headaches, and a childish need for approval from too many people.  I have worried what people think of me.  I have isolated.  I have sat in front of my TV and munched on unhealthy snacks.  I have made plans to go to the library to write so I could be around people, to go to the recreation center to workout, to call friends and just have a long conversation, yet those things haven’t happened as much as I would like.  I believe this is called a codependent slip, indulging in unhealthy patterns as a way of coping with my present unknown.

            So yesterday in my journal, I decided to stop planning on things that I don’t seem to be doing anyway.  I decided to write some of my beliefs as I really know them.  Here’s what I wrote: I am a spiritual as well as a physical being. I believe in God, and I have doubts that Jesus is the only way to get to God.  I know that I can write and that it is a wonderful gift.  I believe that words are holy and powerful things.  I believe that I will be ok.

            Have a great day!

            Love,

            Karen

Loneliness

I quit my (sometimes part-time, sometimes full-time) part-time job last May after I had endured the indignity of pay cuts, the best boss I’d ever worked for fired, and finally my route being cut in half by the new supervisor.  For the last seven years, I had traveled all over Middle TN, parts of Kentucky, and North Alabama and worked among people that I liked and people that I didn’t like.  It was a good job while it lasted and I had a hard time making the decision to quit.  But I wanted to write. 

I had wanted to go to a creative writing certificate program I had found at Middle Tennessee State University for years.  I had put it off for so long because I thought I couldn’t afford it, or because my husband was out of work, or because I didn’t believe I had it in me to really do it.  Now, I took the plunge and signed up for a Fall trimester starting in September.  Over the summer, I worked around the house in the mornings and spent the afternoons developing character profiles and writing up note cards of ideas about the story I had in mind.  I enjoyed a sweet visit from a cousin.  I slept late and reveled in the idea that I could wake to my own internal clock.  I hired a tree surgeon to prune trees. I hired someone to build a retaining wall around my front massive flowerbed and filled it in with gravel.  I painted.  I cleaned.  And I found a writer’s group to go to right here in my home town.  I was in heaven. 

When September came, I learned that I needed to set a writing schedule for myself, so I started writing in the mornings as soon as I woke up.  I would write by hand on a legal pad and then input the scenes into the computer, stopping only to get a cup of coffee ever-so-often.  When I would look up, it would be late in the afternoon and I’d be starved.  I sustained that schedule for at least three months.  And you know what I found out?  Writing friction was damned hard on my mind.

Writing good fiction, I found, meant working with conflict and tension.  My husband would come home from work to find me either ecstatic that I had finished a scene or solemn and grumpy that I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say.  He would ask “are you sure you are happy writing?”  No, I wasn’t happy.  I was irritable.  I had sat all day writing or typing.  I had obsessed over describing how someone could enter a room or open a door.  I hadn’t talked to a soul in a week except him.  I was lonely.

Loneliness had always been my enemy.  Years ago after my first marriage ended, I was scared to death to be lonely.  Somehow, though, I endured that emotion until I made friends with it.  Hell, after a while, I loved being alone.  I lived in Rosenberg, TX at that time and would spend the summer nights in a hot little house with the window up listening to frogs and crickets outside while I wrote poems. 

Today, I decided to take a break and go outside.  There’s a little girl inside of me that needed to be listened to.  I had tried calling some friends, but they were busy.  I think they have paying jobs.  

It's February and the sun has been shinning all day.  I’ve been listening to my inner child.  It is a miracle.