Confession: Part II

After the Great American Novel Tragedy (GANT), you may wonder why I didn’t start over, just re-write the story. I’ve joked in the past that the reason was because it was so bad that I was doing the world a favor. For example, the story was set in Ireland, a country I’ve never visited. Most of the main characters were Irish, and at that point in my life I’d not met a single Irishman. If the cardinal law of writing is to start with what you know, I’d broken it.

But my joke about its quality isn’t completely true. Parts of me know the book wasn’t bad, just naive. I followed the formula for that genre precisely. And I still remember Maeve, my Nancy-Drew like American. I remember the mystery man, Ian. I even remember Angus, the groundskeeper (because all Irish estates need groundskeepers). I still have the blueprint of Ian’s estate in my head, from the house (manor?) to the grounds. Ian even powered his estate using hydroelectricity. He was an engineer. He’d come up with the plans himself. He was mysterious and awesome.

I set the story in County Waterford because I have family roots there. As I was describing the landscape, I wrote about the estate being near ruins of an ancient round tower. I thought that was unrealistic, so I did research on the area. Well it turned out that near Ardmore, in County Waterford, situated minutes off the main Waterford - Cork road, is just such a round tower, ruins from the 12th Century.

The significance of this event should be underscored, because it was the impetus later (on a campus noted for foo foo hippy-ness) for my college pagan phase. I was convinced that I was psychic and if I developed my natural talents, I could be a conduit, tuning into the cosmos like an elegant old radio adjusting her buttons from static to station – from confusion to understanding. Oh, and of course, my ancestors had something to do with that old round tower. One day I’d be sensitive enough to hear what they wanted to tell me about it.

I’m serious. Well, I was.

So what about re-writing the story? Well, the decision to discard it was unconscious at first. I was in college by then, with distractions like work, school, trying to become an adult. Briefly after graduation I did try to take it up again. But I got a job and put it aside once more, that time for good. Today I couldn’t tell you where the remnants of my manuscript are, or if they even exist. It belongs to the shadows of nostalgia.

It’s funny, because for years I regarded this as a failure. I’d never be that earnest dedicated girl again. I couldn’t even re-write a story that was tucked away in the corner of my mind. People say, you can’t go back. Well they were right, I thought, and I clung to that regret. That’s how I viewed everything I did in my life, whenever I experienced failure. I was just a hopeless list of good ideas I could never quite carry off.

But in the meantime, I wrote. Not the great American novel, but about ordinary events from my life that gave me insight on the Big Picture. Maybe there’s still a part of me who wants to be psychic – be that elegant old radio tuning from static to station – only I’ve reached the point in my life where I’m not calling on the ancestors or copying from an expert. Now I know how to speak for myself.

And so here’s the truth. The book I wrote then was for a particular time and place. When I attempted to recreate it, I couldn’t write the same story because I wasn’t the same person. I could no longer write for her, the girl who was trying to become someone else. Time will tell if I’ve lived up to that girl’s expectations. Sometimes it’s hard to escape the worry that I’m letting her down. She was a cool kid, quirky and interesting and worth getting to know.

But making my adult self proud seems more productive than living in the past. I’m not that kid anymore, so it’s unrealistic to try and please her. I’m still writing. I still try to move from static to station, which makes me cool. I don’t have it all figured out yet, which keeps me quirky. I’m still learning, and I think that makes me worth getting to know. So in all the ways that count, I think I still am that kid.

But I’ve learned things she didn’t know, like how to speak with my own voice instead of copying others. I’ve learned how to mend fences and heal from hurt. I’ve learned what’s important to me and what I can live without. And the thought that I still have so much left to learn doesn’t make me tired, I find hope in it, because it means I can meet someone new each day without even leaving home.

And everyone who takes the time to acquaint themselves with me will share in the discoveries, just as I will learn from them. Is that the definition of success? I don’t know. I think maybe it’s my definition of life. Time will tell.

--Laura

Confession: Part I

Since my audience here is probably less than a hundred (that’s funny, it’s probably less than six), I feel comfortable with this confession: I once authored a mystery-romance novel.

I thought of this recently when I was thumbing through the pages of Southern Homespun a book by a family friend. Occasionally I look it up on Amazon to see if anyone is selling copies. Thinking about her book made me think of my own.

Mine was never published of course, but as a junior in High School, I believed I could emulate the style of mystery-romance novels written by Phyllis A. Whitney, someone I’d been reading for a few years because mom liked her.

(At 37, it doesn’t escape me that had my passion been boys, the hard sciences or computing, my life might be much different today. History not so much – because who gets a job with a history degree? I love history now, but I think my 16 year old self did me a favor on that front at least. I’m a bit chapped with her about the other ones though; I bet I would have been good at computers. She could have put a little more shoulder into it. She was convinced she was going to be a foreign correspondent).

She, well I, was also convinced I could write a mystery-romance novel following Whitney’s time tested formula. She was at thirty books by the time I began copying her. And she lived to 104, so that alone is impressive. Anyway, her formula is basically this:

1. Girl discovers mystery is afoot.
2. Mystery tries to kill/maim/injure girl.
3. Girl is perky and sets about to solve mystery.
4. Boy shows up and Girl is irritated yet strangely attracted to Boy. Note: they need to be forced together by chance. This Girl is independent, like Nancy Drew with the titian blonde hair.
5. Boy and Girl fall in love. Kissing ensues.
6. Dramatic tension: Something suggests the Boy isn’t who he says he is and may want to kill Girl!
7. Climactic Moment: Girl tested by extreme danger, mystery killer is revealed and Boy is cleared.
8. Tie up all loose ends of mystery. Kiss Boy. Plan future. The End.

So during one class each day (Yearbook), I wrote my version of this story in a mead spiral notebook. I had won it in a contest that year, along with a box of mead paper products. I still do most of my writing in longhand and struggle to do any real thinking while I’m typing. I’m not sure why.

When I had finished the novel, I typed up the story, using my parent’s typewriter. It was an iron beast with its own black hard plastic carrying case. I stored the entire manuscript in a shirt box.

At some point not long after that I got my first computer. It was a Leading Edge, Model D. and I wanted to be different, so I got the amber CRT monochrome monitor. It had two floppy drives. I don’t remember it running windows, and it is the sole reason I know any DOS commands. I was going to use it in college. I was on the crest of the personal computer age, so of course the novel was meant to go on my new computer and saved on a disk.

Plan's First Fatal Flaw: I destroyed the typewritten pages as I input the story.
Plan's Second Fatal Flaw: I didn’t make copies of the disk.

To cut to the chase, the disk corrupted one day and I lost all but about 50 pages of the end of the book.

--Laura