EXCUSES, EXCUSES

 

          There hasn’t been a blog post for a few days mainly because I wasn’t feeling very creative as in why would anyone want to read what I’m writing about anyway. My life is all so normal and ordinary, I just don’t see how it would be of interest to many folks at all.

          I’ve also been reading the first book I ever wrote back in the mid-90s. I was taking a class then and came up with the idea of a woman running for president and winning. It was called, THE CRADLE PARTY.

          At the time, I also attended the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference every year. The year I began this book, I made an appointment with both an agent and an editor. I put together a one-page synopsis of my book and was absolutely delighted to find the agent wanted to see the whole book which wasn’t finished. Important lesson learned, i.e., never submit a project until it’s completely finished.

          I labored for nine long months to bring this novel to fruition. Along the way I discovered some of my creations had minds, ideas and goals of their own which necessitated my changing mine. Unfortunately, when THE CRADLE PARTY was finished, the agent was no longer interested.

          The novel went to sleep in my bookcase. About ten years later, a group of women with whom I worked and book-clubbed wanted to read my novel. It was passed around and the general consensus was that I should update the novel and shop it around. My friends even went so far as to type my updated chapters for me because my carpel tunnel was so bad.

          Finished once again, I tried shopping it around and found no takers. Once again it went to languish in my bookcase. I've made jokes about how once I'm gone and the kids are cleaning up after me the AJ or Thor will say to the other, "Hey, here's mom's book. Did you ever read it?" This would be followed by the other one saying, "Nope, never did." which in turn would be followed by a "THUNK!!!" as it hit the dumpster.

         A friend who lives east of the mountains asked to read it a while ago. It took me some time, but I finally pulled it out and decided I would re-read it before I sent it off because I wasn’t going to have her send it back. It’s my only copy and what was computerized was on floppy discs which my computer will no longer read, not to mention the fact I think the program is WordPerfect which no longer exists either.

          I’m half-way through those five hundred plus pages and find myself thinking I did a fairly good job when it came to writing that novel. Unfortunately, so many of the “new” things in the book are no longer new but common every-day things like email and cell phones. I’m not sure I could update the entire novel and have it make total sense, besides which, we now have more women in office than ever before plus we’ve even had a woman run for president.

          There is supposedly a way to publish yourself through Amazon. Once my friend returns this book, maybe I’ll give an update a try. I have now written four books and it would be very pleasant to find a way to publish at least one of them. Perhaps I should stop spending hours reading other authors’ work and look to working on my own.

          Meanwhile, tomorrow’s post will be a short story I wrote for a contest. The main requirement was to submit something no longer than than fifteen hundred words. Mine was less than a thousand and I didn’t win. Still, I thought what I wrote, while rather depraved, was still well-written. What will you think tomorrow, I wonder.