Learning to Live

This week I finished a book by Paulo Coelho called Veronika Decides to Die. In the book Veronika is not exactly in despair as she takes what she believes will be a fatal dose of sleeping pills. In fact her life is everything it is supposed to be. And that is the problem.

When Veronika wakes up, she is in a mental hospital, and is told while she didn't die, she has weakened her heart, and will only live about another week. And as pragmatically as she had decided to die, Veronika decides to live. She lets herself feel things she never dared to feel, behave how she had never dared to behave. She was in a mental hospital. When in Rome....

I grew up in a large family. It was crowded, so knowing your place was important. As the youngest I found myself straggling at the end of the line, as my small voice made futile attempts to be heard. Maybe that is why it didn't take me long to pick up a pen and write stories, not of my life necessarily, but of the lives inside my imagination. The people who often lived in ways I never dared.

I began to hold onto everything. The notebook housing whatever I was working on at any given time was a source of confidence. My voice was a little louder, a little more important when I could hold up a piece that I had written and say, "look at this." "I believe in this." "This is good." Occassionally, it occurred to me that I was a little annoying, but I kept on.

When I say I held onto everything, I mean just that. I held onto everything. I had boxes filled with old journals, poems and stories written back when I was eight or nine years old. The screenplay I wrote in 7th and 8th grade. The novel I wrote in 10th and 11th. Countless stories and poems.

And then last Halloween my neighbor in the apartment across from me decided to go out on the deck and have one last cigarette. At 2 am the deck was engulfed in flames. The fire alarm woke me and my son and we went outside, thinking it was a drill. As we stood back and looked at the building it became obvious that it was not a drill.

When all was said and done, we lost the majority of our possessions although my family including pets were okay. I was able to save some of my recent writing -- my laptops were among the few things I saved, but still everything from my childhood, everything from college -- thousands of pages of words-- were gone.

I still stop and think of some of those stories from time to time, and remember that I can't venture into the closet to read one. But I take my moment of sadness, remember the best I can, and let it go again. I remember what I'm writing now, and how when I looked back at what I wrote so many years ago and how much stronger my work has become. But that is just one more thing I love about writing -- the constant room for improvement.

Today, as a self-published author, I decided to hold up my work before my potential readers, and say, "Look at this." "I believe in this." "This is good."


Thank you for reading. Below are my available books, both with generous previews.

The Long and Short of It This collection contains both long and short poems, mostly free verse separated in four categories; Poems at Play, Celebration of Craft,Finding a Place, and Poetry of Conscience. This 50 page collection contains a total of 24 original poems. Entertaining and thought provoking read aloud or on the page.

No Sensible People The sudden and tragic deaths of a young farm couple, Nate and Molly Halifax turn the world upside down for those that were closest to them. Their deaths bring Molly's sister, Lucy, back to her dreaded hometown for the first time in a decade. Molly's daughter, Jennie, is forced to go back with an aunt she has never known to "The Land of Sin" (aka Minneapolis), leaving behind her father's friend Denny -- the one person she still trusts. Lucy struggles to keep Denny as an active participant in Jennie's life. But the two share a past. Will Lucy sacrifice her future to save Jennie's?