And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the
magic of beginnings. ~ Meister Eckhart
This
explains why, although I have only nine-going-on-ten published books and just a
few old and forever-unsold manuscripts, I have a virtual drawerful of Chapter
One through Chapter Threes. Some of them, it must be said, I regret not
finishing—Molly Linden’s story still wakes me in the middle of the night
occasionally with an insomnia-inducing “what if you did this instead of that?”
mantra.
Most
of those beginnings, though, shouldn’t really have happened. They are what I
did when I got to Chapter Six or Chapter Eight of the work in progress
and...oh, crap, it wouldn’t go anywhere. It is the occasional plight of a
pantser, when the whole flying by the seat of said pants runs out of gas and
you’re grounded because you have no conflict. Your hero lacks oomph. You have
no black moment—not even a dove gray one that will darken the horizon before,
voila, the sun of the happily ever after starts struggling up over the land
line.
A
reason I’m here—aside from the fact that I really love writing blog posts and
Brenda said I could come and take her day—is that my editor just called the
other day and offered a contract for my next book in the Harlequin Heartwarming
line. I spent the afternoon zipping around like one of those battery bunnies,
meeting my husband at the door with “guess what!” and planning (several times)
how I would spend my advance. This was my behavior on the first sale—why should
the 10th be any different?
I
don’t have a release date yet, and goodness knows my title of The Winter of Letting Go, probably won’t
stick, but the word “contract” gives instant birth to the word “promotion.” So,
by all means, remember I have a book coming out...er...sometime with the title
of...er...something, and I hope you enjoy it a lot. Oh, and here’s my whole
backlist at a glance: http://ow.ly/Hqpd3
Okay,
commercial’s over—back to beginnings. The book I just sold was shockingly
difficult to write. It took ten months or so, not a
really long time for me, but it seemed longer. Because I had trouble with those
things I listed up there: the conflict, the oomph, the black moment. Because
one time I closed the file and mentally consigned it to that drawer of beginnings.
Well, not exactly one time—it was more like a dozen times.
But
every morning, I opened the file again. And there is a lesson in this. Not for
everyone, but definitely for me.
Beginnings,
as the starting quote of this post says, are magic. When it is the right time.
When the reason for the beginning is that yesterday or the day before or last
Friday at midnight, there was a finishing. When I only begin a new story
because writing the old one has defeated me, there is no magic in that, only
desperation and more than a hint of self-pity.
Maybe
it is time to empty that drawer (except maybe for Molly Linden’s story—I so like her) and just start a new story
when the last one is finished. When the time is right and the beginning really
is magic.
Thanks for having me here today. I wish you
all magic beginnings and happy endings!
Retired from the
post office, Liz Flaherty spends non-writing time sewing, quilting, and doing
whatever else she wants to. She and Duane live in the old farmhouse in Indiana
they moved to in 1977. They’ve talked about moving, but really…30-some years’ worth of stuff? It’s not happening!
She’d love to
hear from you at lizkflaherty@gmail.com
or please come and see her at:
