377 days - Blog #13 - My 39th Birthday

I may have mentioned a week ago that I have a list.  I actually started writing it 14 months ago.  But it didn’t motivate me.  And yet… I still managed to cross off one item.  In the year of 38, I left a job that was a huge part of my life.  A job that meant a great deal to me.  I started something new and challenging and much closer to home.  I’ve already learned heaps in the last eight months.  Through it I really have been able to expand my focus from small and detailed to the big picture.

The ripples of that are pretty awesome.

And it kind of changes the list that isn’t quite complete.  So I’m not going to post it, even though it is very much the strategic plan of these 377 days.  The specifics will come later.   Today, for my birthday, I will tell the first and last.

 

#1.  I will get my manuscript to a point of completion where I can give it to a reader, take it out of my head and see if the wings will take flight.

Done.

I set myself the goal of today.  It’s actually a decent writing deadline for me.  Something about turning the page on another year in the life makes me want to feel like I’ve accomplished something.  So even if the year is kind of drab, I can say it drew to a close with a few characters, plots, and some research woven into a novel.

And just to seal the deal today, I made my celebration of my birthday a writing day.

I was thinking recently how my first novel is a very lean, very modest success.  Every once in a while I’ll sell a couple copies to fund my coffee habit or buy a lunch from the Museum Café, but I also give away as many copies as I sell.  And yet… if I think about it, that novel was phenomenally successful.  Not through a fortune of salary.  But through the fortune of the community it helped me to discover and shape.

This is another story I feel I’ve told many times, but I have never written in my blog.  Through the attempt to promote my book, I joined the world of Goodreads.  I sought out writers from Central Mass, where I was planning to move back and where part of my novel took place.  I found one author, Cheryl Cory, who penned a novel based on The Sound of Music – Must’ve Done Something Good.  I read her book, said so on Goodreads… and Cheryl recognized my name.  I didn’t recognize hers because she was married.  Turned out we went to kindergarten together.  

We got together, had coffee, and decided to help each other in promoting and selling our books.  We also talked a lot about writing, which is a labor of love, but a largely solitary activity.  It is an invisible kinship that requires little more than an ‘I get it.’  But turns out, Cheryl and I have a common interest in quite a few things – like local theater and baked goods… and Richard Armitage.

Anyway, we figured if we liked talking about writing and enjoyed the support of another artist, there had to be more.  We created a Facebook group, which became a lot of other things.  But mostly, there are our writeins.  Once a week.  Although those once a weeks have had tributaries that are in different locations on different days.  It isn’t a critique group.  Just an hour of talking with fellow writers.  Then an hour of gentle peer pressure to shut up, stop skulking on the internet, and write.

I will go more into all that in another blog.  For today’s purpose, I will explain my own tributary.  Once every few months, I capitalize on my rural setting and host a few friends for an extra hour or two of writing.  We have gone for a walk to see my neighbor’s lake.  We have had a potluck.  We have gone to lunch at the absolutely divine local-ish bakery, Rose 32.  We write.  Then we talk loosely of what we write or read.  It’s a really good way to feel great about creativity.

So, today was my birthday.  It was my deadline.  I had a writein.  We went to the bakery.  I finished the draft.  I started talking about it.  I want to keep talking about it… but I need to wait for my readers to tell me what they think first.

But, after a luscious piece of carrot cake and almost a whole pot of coffee and now a glass or two of wine as I await the super moon’s second act, I can check that item off my list.

Huzzah.

The list, of course, is going to have 40 items.  That was, like I said, #1.

This is #40.