"You Will Be Fine"

My love of reading started as a little girl when I discovered the Nancy Drew mysteries.  Fiction is what I prefer.  I love to escape from an ordinary life and meet intriguing characters, visit exotic places, have great adventures and solve thrilling mysteries.

It was always my dream to be a writer, but by age 56 all I had managed to write were business letters, e-mails, dull and dreary types of things.  Over the years I have read innumerable books on how to write fiction, but I never sat down and wrote a thing.  Then something changed.   I read a quote attributed to Andy Rooney, “My advice is not to wait to be struck with an idea.  If you’re a writer, you sit down and damn well decide to have an idea.  That’s the way to get an idea.”   I damned well decided to have an idea.  I became a closet novelist and over the last two years wrote 75 percent of a novel, A Charmed Existence.  Not even my best friends knew my secret.

And then last month, I saw Carol Eisenberg’s e-mail about Laima’s creative writing workshop.  I got nervous.  Should I sign up for it?  Suppose everything I had written was garbage?  Would I be able to handle criticism?  I sent Laima an exploratory e-mail, expressing my concerns, and received the response, “My workshops are designed to be a safe and nurturing place for beginning writers to take the creative risks they need to take to grow as writers.  Please do not worry.  You will be fine.”

So I decided to take the risk, and I’m happy to tell you, I was fine.  I have received nothing but encouragement from our little Wednesday evening group and in the process have made some wonderful friends in Laima, Elaine, Tricia and Joy.   I also met a brave little boy named Jimmy Brackett, I traveled to the Tallgrass Prairie National Park in Kansas, and I learned about someone whose life has been as different from mine as a person’s could be but whose losses, sadly, I have experienced and can relate to.   Every week I have looked forward to our workshop, hearing constructive criticism, sipping tea and watching chickens peeking through the sliding doors eavesdropping on us.

These Wednesday nights have been the highlight of my summer.  I want to thank Laima for her wisdom and guidance over the last six weeks, and I wish her the best of luck with her exciting new job in Hong Kong.  I know I will miss her, and I think I speak for everyone in our Wednesday night workshop.