I wrote my first manuscript more than fifteen years ago, a contemporary
romance that never saw the light of day. In the years since I finished that
manuscript, it was eaten by a dinosaur computer and disappeared from my life.
But not before earning me a rejection letter from a publisher. I remember
little but the first names of my characters and the basic plot line.
I moved onto other
things. Marriage. Children. And the joys and sorrows that accompanied both. I never
thought to write another manuscript. That brief foray into the writing world
was put behind me and kept as a treasured memory that I examined from time to
time. Then, last June my oldest daughter talked me into writing a book. How she
managed that feat, I’ll never figure out, but one day I gave in to her begging
and sat down to the computer intent on writing a few lines to appease her.
Five weeks later my
daughter and I finished that first story. That was nine months and ten
manuscripts ago. In that time my daughter and I have learned things we never
imagined. We’ve written manuscripts together and on our own. And I have
discovered I only live in the present in body. In mind, I am firmly planted in
the 1800’s.
But more than that, I discovered something about myself I
never knew in those first short weeks of writing. I not only love to read, but I
adore writing. When I sit at the computer with a blank word document in front
of me, something magical happens. There’s a connection between my imagination
and my fingertips that somehow transfers that blank sheet of digital paper into
a story with people and places that I had no idea were living inside my head.
But that makes me sound
like a raving lunatic, so maybe I shouldn’t admit that.
At least I haven’t
resorted to having quilting bees with my heroines or joining my heroes on
cattle drives. Wait! I went on a cattle drive in my last manuscript. It was
great fun. I got to lasso my hero and… No, that wasn’t me. That privilege went
to my heroine. All she let me do was put her story on that no longer blank
sheet of digital paper.
Then she broke my heart.
Or maybe my hero did. Can you believe they actually fell in love and made me
end their story after only 97,000 words? Now I’m forced to let them lead their
lives without me while I move on to other people I didn’t know were living in
my head.
