It's Never Too Early...but it can be too late

With the advent of fall, the creative juices for most of us NaNoWriMos start to flow a little more freely.  We're all aware of that fateful day in November when we will see what we're made of - if we can truly manage 50,000 words in a single month of madness.  Since I first started participating, I have loved every moment of the struggle, and the reward of simply winning.  

With this in mind, I dove head first this year into a greater level of responsibility by applying to be my local municipal liaison (which I have yet to spell successfully on a first attempt).  It is an opportunity I am so excited to partake in that I get a little bubbly just thinking about it.  This year will mark the fourth and final book in a series (though I have already decided on add ons for coming years about other characters and the "what if" years after high school).  It will be a year of truly wonderful beginnings and less than wonderful endings.

However, this will also be a bittersweet year.  The inspiration behind my character who is set to star in November just passed away unexpectedly.  Wendy was truly the most remarkable, loving, caring, unselfish being on the face of the planet, and I cherished my friendship with her.  She was everything that people should aspire to be.  She was my friend when I was still a neurotic girl, barely more than a teenager, and she remained my friend for over a decade.  She helped push me into publishing, she always encouraged me to write, and she read everything I ever sent her.  The greatest tragedy is not that I never told her what she meant to me - I did but I could have done more - no, the greatest tragedy is that stories she had wanted to know the end to will never be read by her.  She will never know how Nora and Ivan survive their teenage years, she will never know how Scarlett finds out about her father.  Most importantly, though, she will never know all that Mary Usher has to offer.  Mary Usher was based on Wendy, and the hidden strengths of such a sweet, loving woman were set to come out in this young girl.  

There is no question in my mind that Pandora will be dedicated to my wonderful friend.  I just wish that there had been time to tell her what would happen, how it would end, so that she would never have had to wonder while I struggled with the time to put to paper all the complexities mirrored in her fascinating soul.  

For those who believe that the dead watch over us, I hope you're correct.  I hope that for a few, brief moments, Wendy might be able to see that without her in my life, I could never have even had the ability to even try and live this dream.  

Emotions are the fuel that fans a writer's flames.  We live and breathe love, hate, and everything in between.  But sorrow and tragedy are harder still to articulate, especially when we are still mired in the midst of them.  I can only hope that in six week's time, when the world of writers comes together to frantically put together their stories, that I can do justice to my friend, and tell mine.

-L.E. 

A Break in Search of Sanity

For all those who, like me, are not full time writers, I hope the following can help you in some tiny way, not give up.


I have said before that I disagree with the edict that a writer must write every single day.  The adage of "even if it's a little".  My brain simply doesn't work like that.  I need to write as a release, and sometimes, the downtime required for that simply doesn't exist in a busy day.

A quick detour into my personal feelings on continuing education.  When I was in high school, I was the very top of my class. I had scholarships to every college I applied to, but never enough to have covered living expenses, and certainly not enough to help find a way to balance my other great passion: my horses.  As such, I made the decision when I was eighteen that my horses were my family, and they would come first.  In the interim, I have only found the prospect of college far too expensive to entertain.  For someone who is not wealthy, does not come from wealthy parents, and has no hidden relative willing to foot any bills, college was simply never an option.  Well, for the first time in over a decade, it finally is, thanks in large part to a realization of circumstances (i.e. financial aid) and a dependable, if not high paying job to cover my horses.  

While I could go on for quite awhile about my opinions about the college system and how it marginalizes those of us who do not fit into the well to do or top financial aid categories, that's not the purpose of my morning.  Indeed, the purpose of my morning is to finally have a tiny window of opportunity to WRITE.

Full time job, full time school, part time job, and volunteering doesn't tend to lend much chance of anything else.  So far this year, I've spent my tiny windows of freedom with my horses.  However, I have an entire morning, and so I am going to write as if my life depended on it.  My life might not, but at times it feels as if my soul does.

And so, in typical Rambling fashion, I have come to my conclusion and the very point of this narrative.  For those who have a million other things on their plate, don't feel like just because you missed a day, that writing is ruined.  This isn't a twelve step program.  If you don't make it to your Writers Anonymous meeting a few times, they won't kick you out.  Instead, think about what keeps you going on a day to day basis.  Do you still see stories in everyday threads of life?  Do you still wake up and hear your characters say a few words of greeting?  If any of this is true, or a hundred other ways you feel the creativity of being a writer, hold on to it.  There will come a quiet morning, and you can remember what it is to put thoughts to paper and let your spirit fly.  

And so now, without further ado, I leave the internet world behind in search of my sanity.  I'm only hoping that by the end of my morning, I will have found it somewhere.  Anywhere...