Monday, February 14, 2011

I'm Doing It

After all these years of writing, note taking, character sketching, thinking and wondering and wishing, I’ve decided the time has come to send something in. This may not sound earth-shattering to some of you but to me, this is big.

I’m getting too old now to wonder “what if” and whether or not these stories that I write are that good. At least, that’s what my kids tell me and they have been listening to them since they were young. The problem is I didn’t want to write for children, I wanted to write for adults. Now that I am a grown-up I wanted to write for grown-ups. The problem is I don’t understand grown-ups. Life rolls by and we change into acceptable society or adapt to have a relationship or get burned out by our jobs and forget that we were once young and were set to rule the land, and maybe even forget who we are. Children aren’t jaded. Their world is second by second and they experience it from one moment of flooding tears to smiling at the flitting butterfly as she goes about her day. Children are reality. Adults are contaminated.

Kids have always been part of my life. Our house was the one they chose to hang out at, eat at, and sleep over. They worked through laughter, school problems, and friendship angst, using the never ending supply of jigsaw puzzles on the kitchen table. These puzzles are now hanging on the walls, a sweet reminder of those times.

I now have a beautiful, healthy, happy, grandson, a gift, who at 9 weeks old, smiles at my stories.

I have been destined to write for children. They are who I know.

Filing away my adult stories, I have picked up my story about Isabel and the Kingdom and am working on the outline from the middle, and she is slowly coming back, after being pissed at me for having left her for so long. Four years is a long time Nance, she said. And that relationship didn’t work out, did it? No, it did not, Isabel, but it was for a good reason. And I had to know, I had to try. It didn’t work out with him, but it will with someone else.

And just like that I realized I had to finish my story. I have to complete the process. I’m enrolling in ICL’s course and going for publication. I have to go for the goal.

I’m doing it.

1 comment:

steer clear of falling anvils said...

Making and acknowledging the decision is the first step. You can do it!!