Unexpected Gifts and Brenda Ueland

Writing is not all anxiety and danger. Unexpected gifts lurk within the writer's grasp.

In the novel I'm writing (I don't have a name yet), I have a character who plays a social worker. I had made her young, bright, and kind. As I moved along, I realized it would be neat to have her older, more involved, also very kind, and, lo and behold, motherly.

For someone whose own relationship with her mother left a lot to be desired, this writing is sheer joy. I feel like I'm cheating a bit, but for one brief chapter, the character and I are almost one. At this moment the older social worker, I call her Greenie, is taking my lead character, Julie, shopping. Julie is relishing being mothered in a way she never was. She used to envy seeing girls shopping for clothes with their mothers. Now she is doing that with the her Auntie Mame type social worker: Greenie.

Also, there is the very slowly developing love relationship with Steve. The ability to have he and Julie capture parts of something I had long ago, is a chance to relive it. It's fun, sexy, nostaglic, and energizing. This male character has a long life expectancy.(In other words, no plans to kill him off!)

A novel is indeed a "bully pulpit." I've got the Cuban Missile Crisis to discuss; unionism; black-white relationships; growing up in the south; and more, more, more. Describing New York in the sixties. Making jabs at the deficit mental health systems and exploring the mystery of psychotherapy. Bully pulpit indeed, as well as an incredible journey.

I can't imagine what I will do when this is over. It will be hard to let Steve , Sweete, Karen, Andrew, and Leona go. My guess is that I'll be working hard to discover how I can find another topic/issue/character that moves me to write. Again, in my mind I cheat and think I could write a sequal, then I could stay with my characters. I wonder if that's why some mystery writers stay with their PI for book after book.

I thought I'd blog this since usually I'm whining about the pain of it all. And that's true enough, but, the fun is there too. Really, being a writer is such an enormous gift.
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Brenda Ueland

Note: Today I bought, for maybe the 10th time, Brenda Ueland's book on writing. I keep giving it to people I work with; this copy I intend to keep. She is ageless/wild/ savvy. It was the first book on writing as a passionate way of living that I ever read. I read her in my thirties and am reading her in my sixties. (Ms. Ueland died in 1985; she was 93 and living as creatively as she advocated). If anyone has missed reading her, the title is: IF YOU WANT TO WRITE.

(When I sat in my car reading the introduction, I discovered that Ms. Ueland wrote an autobiography available from Holy Cow !Press, Duluth, MN. I intend to order it.)

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Dealing with Anxiety

After blogging last night about my angst/anxiety, I pulled out Emily's book of quotes and went through it slowly. And slowly I begin to calm down as I read person after person saying the way to yourself lies in your passion and to deny that passion (and any work it entails) is to die. And I wrote down one quote which I don't have with me, but in essence it said, ...if you don't write your story, it will not be written. No one saw the world as you saw it; when you saw it; and that perhaps is something you owe yourself to share.)
Fini