From the Top

From Hasbeen to Wannabe, my journey from atrophied writing muscles to fighting fitness someday soon.

I have written a lot of words in my lifetime. I’ve published a lot too. It makes me wonder what the ratio to published vs. un-published is. All the prayers I’ve scribbled, the journal entries I’ve poured over, the long list of poems I’ve squirreled away, the books that have never been given to the world, the texts, the emails, the letters I’ve never sent.

Recently, I read The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it at first and I was definitely expecting something other than it was. By the end, I was sobbing, cherishing every word, anxious to find out how it ended. There was one line in the book that changed my mind, made it something more than a number to check off the summer reading list… I can’t remember the exact quote, but the message was that writing handwritten letters leaves a tangible legacy in the world. Most of our writing is digital these days, so that when we die and our cell phones are turned off and our laptops put away, the thread of our lives, the words we’ve left behind, the journey we’ve taken simply disappears. Whereas real words, written with real pens on real paper, live on. They are cherished. Passed on from generation to generation. Are pressed into the world, into the land, into the fabric of the universe.

It made me want to write letters. Send them to everyone I know. It made me want to pull out my journals and organize them by dates. It made me believe in the power of words and the way they define us as people. As humans. As eternal beings with eternal souls.

I mentioned the quote to my husband and the sincere impact it had on me. He said, “Well you don’t have to worry about that, do you? Your books tell your story. You’ve already started your legacy.”

It made me swell with pride and a contentedness I didn’t know I needed to acknowledge. It also made me desperate for a finish line without a tangible place in time. At this point in my life, I don’t feel like the books I’m leaving behind are enough. Nor do I feel that many will read them after I’m gone. I feel stuck in the middle somewhere, like I’ve wandered off course and gotten lost in the weeds. I’m so proud of the books I’ve written and published. And yet they are not the sum total of all I have to write, all I have to give. There is so much more. Worlds and universes and galaxies of words just waiting to be put down on paper.

At any given time, my mind is spinning with plots and characters not yet birthed. With the stories I have yet to finish. With ideas and concepts not yet fully formed. Write, my heart beats. Write, write, write.

But how. When? Why??

I don’t mean why. Not really. But the question lingers none the less.

The other two problems are more pressing. When?? In between soccer games and senior celebrations? Between running to the store, to the field, to the job? Between getting home from work (always later than I intend) and making dinner (always later than I intend) and going to bed (always later than I intend)?

How is a bigger question. I’ve always felt this intense vastness at the beginning of every new book. How does one even write a full-length novel? How do you get through three paragraphs, let alone three chapters? How do you ever finish such an immense undertaking? It has always been a stumbling, tripping affair for me. Even in my prime, even in my youth. Notes scribbled into notebooks, plot points graphed on pages, whole new worlds held in my brain. Still one word plonked onto the page in singular fashion. A word, and then another word, and finally a sentence. Eventually a paragraph wrestled into existence. And in the end, the bones of something that will one day be a book.

Now, after years of wandering in other directions, I’m back at the beginning. Or at least what feels like a starting line. My writing muscles have atrophied, my fingers have forgotten the way, my stamina—the sheer, steely grit that sustained me for so long—is a quivering, frail thing that might buckle beneath any pound of pressure.

And how else are books fully formed? They are diamonds dragged through raging fire, compressed beyond bearable limits, forged and formed into something wholly different than its original, hatchling idea that did not have legs or wings or teeth.

So what to do first. How to start.

I want it so badly. Oh, goodness, that urge to write is as necessary as breathing. An instinct I was born with. A side to my soul I can’t keep ignoring.

Thus far, I have been reasoning it away with reality. The publishing world has changed, I remind myself. You don’t even know how to market in this cold, new, AI world. Your friends have moved on. Your tactics no longer work. You are worse than a beginner because at least beginners know how to ask questions.

I am a geriatric author in a fresh, young town already overrun by slick, stunning talent who have no patience to teach an old dog new tricks.

But still my heart beats for more.

Still, my soul cannot stop its imaging, its building, its storied way.

Besides, reality has no place in an author’s life.

So here we go again. From the top. With nothing but the ancient basics I know and cling to. Blogs first as I practice moving the words from my mind to the page. And some necessary social media. Reading of course. By the fistfuls. And then to open the book—the one I am writing. And the one blooming somewhere in the ether. Word after slow, sluggish word. One at a time, the only way anything is born from the page.

There are more questions to ask, so much I am behind in or don’t know at all. So much yet to fail at, learn from, overcome.

But let’s start here. Let’s blog. Let’s pour out. Let’s remember how to put that unnamed substance swimming through my trembling body into form and thought and coherent sentences. Not all at once. But slowly, methodically, training session after training session until the muscles are defined again, until my lungs can suffer the strain, until my fingers remember the path, and my soul sings the song of stories once again.

The distant finish line may be far, far off, but first we must cross the hard-earned mile markers along the way.