PORTRAIT OF A LIFE

No post yesterday because I was really busy trying to get as many chapters typed in as possible. There's nothing like the feeling of being organized. I managed to get about five chapters typed in, renamed some others that had been typed out of order, printed out other chapters that had yet to be printed, slipped them through the three whole punch and then loaded everything into the second of two four inch binders. As I sat there on the floor, organizing, collating, loading ... I looked back over this mass of writing, this project I've been working on feverishly for the past three years and I thought, Gee, my life is right here on these pages...chapter for chapter.

My novel is a novel. It is only autobiographical to the degree that all fiction is created from some person, place or thing experienced by the writer. We writers create based upon what we've seen, read, heard at some point in our lives. To say that anything is pure fiction, is, well, fictitious. We describe the color of a woman's hair based upon some color we've seen at some point. And if truth be told, charachters are not necessarily created, rather, they are snippets of people we've seen or had some contact with at some point. Hair the color of a woman's at the grocery store, a bellowing voice like the father across the street, a pot belly like the man at the filling station. You get my point. Good writers always pull from reality. Myself, I do not travel without my pocket index cards. Good material seems to find me and I've learned from experience not to ever be caught without pen and paper. A hunched back old man with fat earlobes and hairy, caterpillar eyebrows wearing white shoes and plaid pants makes a splendid, crotchety old man stuck in a time warp. Two young women flying down the highway, doing ninety, hair flapping in the wind brings to mind a story about youth. Anyway, I digress. I just want to clarify that it is not my life (in the autobiographical sense) on those pages .... but I see my life when I read those chapters.

My opening chapter --- I remember the small two bedroom apartment Spouse and I had when I first started the novel. Young(er), ambitious, naiive. I told everyone I was writing a novel. I thought for sure I was going to write a novel. I had no idea that I was going to spend the next three years of my life waiting for this story to be revealed to me rather than me creating it. There was only Kid 1 at the time. I remember the struggle -- she never slept, she hated eating from a spoon, she was the hardest child in the world to potty train. I remember feeling like such a failure. I remember all the days we spent taking short walks, the days at the park, just she and I. I remember her size 2 shoes. She was an artist from the very beginning. She loved to paint at her easel, loved to draw. She seems to have been born with a writing device in her hand.

Somewhere around Chapter Twenty -- Spouse and I deliberating about when to start trying for Kid #2. We'll wait until after we buy our house.

Chapter Thirty Something --- We buy the house. Who would have thought there'd be so much to do? Closing costs are a beast in this state ... good thing we had money for all the unexpected incidentals that most new homeowners never factor in. Spouse spent a grand on a riding lawnmower. I wanted to paint every room.

Mid-way --- We try for Kid #2 and are successful. In ten months (40 weeks) we will be a family of four. Four months into the pregnancy I discover --- the greatest joy imaginable --- that I am having a boy! I have always, always, always wanted a son. He lives with me right up until his due date and when he is born I am caught, for the very first time in my life, speechless. Ten months of bursting creativity. Prose that is rich, vivid, alive. Charachters that are full and round, well developed in my opinion.

Three Quarters of the Way --- No sleep. Tired always. Preschool for Kid 1 and lots of field trips, activities, etc. Work. Marriage. The Novel. When will I ever be done? Why am I doing this to myself? My novel is crap. No one will ever want this. I save every article I read about other writers who've "made it." No matter what genre they write in, I know there's nothing like hearing someone say, "Yea it's some hard sh**, writing a novel." I keep a file marked Inspiration and tuck these articles in there. It's about two inches thick today and in it is some of the best writing advice anyone could ever have. There are essays/interviews in there of Alice Walker, Joanna Trollope, Walter Mosley and so many others. There are the New York Times pieces from the Writers on Writing column.

Near the End --- My first trip to the Iowa Summer Writer's Festival. Every writer, no matter what stage, needs to go to Iowa. I took a class on Show, Don't Tell with the incomparable Sands Hall. This workshop literally changed my writing life. Things I saw in day to day existence took on a whole new light. I learned how to definitively charachterize. I learned !! Kid 1 and Kid 2 are getting older. Spouse feels much more comfortable being alone with them for a long stretch of time.


The End --- First Grade for Kid 1. Nursery school for Kid 2. Freedom again. Three half days of having the house all to myself. The bold step on my part to write full time and change my job hours to part time. A leap of faith.

I began to think, at the end of the day after all of my collating and stapling and Getting Organized-dom, that perhaps it's true that woman is immortal in the creation of art. I understand what poet Alphonse d'Lamartine meant when he wrote: "Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no shore, it rushes on and carries us with it."
Time rushes on. Time has indeed rushed on, but in these pages, I see a very vivid portrait of my life.

Peace Always,
ANGEL