I guess I should consider changing my blog title to "Patsy in Writerland," because that's where I live these days. But it's also, in many ways, still Wonderland, too, so I'm not going to fix it. At least not until it appears to need fixing.
And yes, I'm back. After nearly four years of silence, the floodgates have opened and words are spewing forth, gushing forth, flooding forth. This flood of words first showed up on my computer and then in my iPad. Then it overflowed into my emails, and now the waters are lapping here, at my blog, where the drought has been harshest and has lasted for many, many months.
But no longer. I'm writing--novels, emails, and blogs, not to mention letters, notes, and grocery lists. Anywhere there's a keyboard, my fingers tap and words fly out.
Today, in this "rebirth of a blog," I'm focusing on this novel thing, this mushroom of creativity that suddenly--almost overnight, it seems--pushed its way out of whatever soil it had been sleeping in for more than 70 years and grew to a size, shape, and solidity that, finally, demanded that it be plucked and laid out on the groaning banquet table of self-published novels for possible consumption by--you the reader!
The seed was planted more than ten years ago, when I brought a fledgling chapter to a writing group in Austin for their gentle ministrations. Taking to heart some of what they told me to do, I gave that chapter a new set of feathers and tried pushing it out of the nest again. Splat! Not very successful. So back into the recesses of the nest it went, to lick its wounds and work on yet another set of feathers.
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| My first title page--home-grown, yes, but adequate to the purpose--at least for now! |
And the words just poured out. In the middle of the month, I flew from here, Murray, in western Kentucky, up to Maine for Thanksgiving with my son and his family--and every day, while the rest of the family worked or went to school, I sat at my iPad, bluetoothed keyboard smoking, and continued to write. Took Thanksgiving Day off for some excellent turkey, but was right back at it on Black Friday. By November 30, I had over 53,000 words. I had met the challenge! But I didn't stop for even a day, and, by February 19, the word count was more than 145,000. And it was pens down.
What amazes me now, looking back, is that there was never a moment where I sat, hands poised over the keyboard, and wondered what to say next. Never. At night, I'd write scenes in my head, changing dialogue, redressing this character or that, choreographing a love scene or a rape. By day, the words flowed out of me as if they'd been fashioned into a chain that could be pulled out, one link after another, in the right order (mostly) and ready to be engraved onto the page.
Even before that February day of completion arrived, I'd already begun scripting the second novel in my head. So there was hardly a gap between "The End" of one novel, and "Once upon a time" of the next. Hey, man, I thought, this novel-writing thing is unbelievable! So easy! And what the heck is writer's block, anyway--something to eat?
In a nutshell, that's how, at the age of 71 and a half, I became a novelist. It's like those middle-aged film stars who are suddenly--overnight, it seems--the talk of the town. Yeah, right, never mind the fifteen or twenty years of struggle, of bit parts, of waiting table hoping for those bit parts. And that's sort of how I feel about my sudden career change. It was overnight--but it took years to get here.
But more of that next time. For now, just let me give you a link to that first novel, if I haven't already emailed it to you. Put the following into your browser, and you're there: www.amazon.com/dp/B00CD7WQUK. And, if you read it and like it, don't forget to write a review! Thanks.
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