FROM INSPIRATION TO MANIFESTATION: EVER WONDER HOW WRITERS ACTUALLY DO WHAT IT TAKES TO WRITE AND FINISH A BOOK?
Over three years ago, my dream, after years of writing academic non-fiction, met up with Pam Smedley's dream to get writers out of their comfort zones. There is no doubt that the weekly classes, with a steady attendance of four to six writers, provided the creative medium I had been missing for years. Pam advised me to switch to fiction, to pick a main character I could identify with and get busy! The group is a topic that deserves a separate blog. Today I'm focusing on my personal adventure.
When I was a kid, probably around ten, I found a book in our family bookshelf titled "I Married Adventure" by Osa Johnson. It was non fiction that read like fiction because she was definitely no soccer mom. She and her husband Martin made films about the Solomon Islands and Africa between the years 1920 and 1940. Her biography, written by Suzanne Arruda, was titled "From Kansas to Cannibals: The story of Osa Johnson" so you get the idea. This was the first time I really got a sense of adventure. My only problem was what psychologists call a sense of personal agency. I just didn't have confidence. Then or later. I didn't think I could cope with the challenges that real adventure brings. I became an avid fiction reader instead.
Little did I realize that every protagonist in every book I had read would come back to urge me on when I began to identify with the protagonist in Blood Dilemma. How on earth did a "better safe than sorry" individual come up with such a creepy title? Could be the years I was a Stephen King fan, preceded by Jr. High School, during which I devoured war novels my Norman Mailer and John Hersey (okay, I admit it, everyone read that racy Peyton Place bombshell in Jr. High). The fact that my own home frequently resembled a war zone gave me an appreciation for terror. No one used guns in our home though; it was all hand-to-hand combat laced with terror-inducing threats. No one went to counseling in the 1940's and 50's, and there were no child abuse reporting laws in the US until the 1970's.
My lifeline was novels, my bedroom was my time machine.
So fast forward to 2018, and the publication of Blood Dilemma. It's clear that getting my own identity hooked up with my protagonist got my female Walter Mitty revved up. Pam had started us with lessons from "The Writer's Journey." Then we took turns reading our weekly creations. The intelligent, open-minded women in the group listened to every idea with realistic and encouraging observations. Adventures abounded.
I had opened a small office near my home just before I located the group. My first act of independence since retiring from full-time clinical work at a Central Valley agency, and taking guardianship of 3 grandchildren following a crisis in my daughter's marriage. At this point, my husband Larry and I had been raising the little ones for 4 years, on 12 acres in the Sierra foothills.
Clearly, the choice to write and the determination to make a total commitment was born out of my own need to reinvent my life. It is obvious the process has to overtake resistance at every turn. It has to grab your heart, your soul, your gut and your brain, and haul all of your being where it's never gone before.
What would you witness if you watched a writer investing 20 to 40 hours a week for 3 years? Would you see the glue that holds that commitment in place? What's going on with someone that empowers them to keep going with no clear end in sight?
...more to come
