Hot off the press!

Dear B,

I can’t tell you how much I have learned over the past few weeks in these edits.

• Formatting
• Chapter to chapter flow
• Red Penning
• Speech Tags (that make sense)
• Past perfect vs. Past perfect continuous
• Insanity
• Complacency (although I was fairly familiar with this one before)

It’s no surprise to you that most of this is new to me. I enjoy the journey with an anxiety that is regulated by fat and sugar frozen into my favorite “Cookie dough Ice Cream” and sold by the pint. And as always there is coffee – beloved brown goodness that keeps the tiny anvils from my lids .

An incredible thing has started to happen in my writing life too that actually isn’t unpleasant. Now that I am more effective and regularly in the frame of mind, a novelista that is, I am constantly making parallels from this land of fiction to the usually more dour reality.

Is it true that I may be a character in a much grander and larger book that is called life? Could it be possible that we are entranced by ourselves not just because we are vain but maybe it is because the story we live could never be less interesting than the ones we read and write? B, I think it could.

I’ve found that I am developing just now, like my characters, and it comes in instant growth spurts that only happen with great happenstance or lulls of nothing but thought (rarer is the latter). It is quite painful I might add but where is there growth without some sort of pain. It’s not all doom and gloom though, no not at all.

When I look around me, I find that I have indeed written the greatest story I’ll ever know already. I believe you do know of her dear B, she is about three feet tall and has a penchant for making her teal my little ponies fly around my office. Whenever I am hard at work on my next scene it is not unusual for the toy horses to end up right in my lap amongst my red penning in print. I am not annoyed, because to her these are characters as well and they do far more interesting things than mine. I mean flying is definitely part of the fantasy genre and they seem to never stop with endless amounts of energy, boy who couldn’t read all about that? She makes them kiss a lot too, which speaks to romance… But more on that later.

Here are the first fifty pages in real print. I stared and stared at the cover page for so long after it was printed.

There is a certain amount of pride already taken in this endeavor but I do feel extra so whenever I can multitask and juggle a work schedule, dinner, grocery shopping, horseback riding, and feeding the dog, diapers, husband love, and church Sunday school, all the while saying to myself, “It’s done, it’s done, it’s done! Well not quite done done, but fin for now.”

Thank you for taking this journey with me dear friend.

Ciao for now

L