purplerabbit

Thirty years ago, I wrote a novel. No kidding, I was twelve. I wrote it in a spiral notebook, line by line in pencil. Kids at school found out about it and began "stealing" the notebook from me to read it and then give it back begging for more. It was the first positive response I can ever remember from my so-called "peers" to the geek-girl.

Then I made a friend and in my trust and adoration of her, I loaned her the book to take home and read. I never saw it again and she refused to talk to me. She said it was burned. Now, I wonder that her parents may have found it and disturbed by its very adult content, destroyed it and forbade her speak to me again. I will likely never know.

I tried to rewrite the novel, but it was hard with so much to redo. Then came my dad's motorcycle accident and it was a long time before I came back to it again.

I tried again at twenty, only to have another dark and dangerous period in my life, followed by my move to California, a new job and more.

I wrote both fiction and poetry in my childhood, teens and early twenties. I had also begun my work as a journalist in high school and that gradually took over. Then college and grad school, I barely had time to read fiction let alone write it. Research articles and newsletters were my writing. I had won awards in both poetry and journalism. Praise and publication for my academic writing.

For the past several years, I have not been able to write either. First my mind was full of grief, then my body full of pain. Then the prescription drugs.

Withdrawal has been extremely painful and I am still very weak. But with the return of my senses (in both senses of that word), my writing has also returned. Poetry and fiction, my first writings. Not just that, but the characters of my first novel have begun to speak again.

I don't know if you have ever been a fiction writer or read as I have of others writers who feel as though fiction characters have voices that speak through them. This was always true for me. I am very tired and want to sleep now. But I haven't slept through this day, instead a wrote nearly 6,000 words of fiction -- nearly four chapters of that first story of many years ago.

What new wonders will tomorrow bring? In the meantime, I hope they are quiet long enough for me to get some sleep tonight.

Love.