The Writer's Life

Writing this book was the easy part - it was very satisfying to sit day after day and work on my knowledge and my words. I carefully filtered fact from fiction, and decanted my prose from other bits and pieces I had picked up along the way. I researched and searched, and came up with sometimes surprising conclusions. At times I was discouraged, when I felt the writing would never be done, then I would start a new chapter and feel renewed.

When I started writing, I was going through difficult changes in my life and writing the book was a way of anchoring myself. Then I spent a summer in Italy, at my safe summer hideout.

Every morning I would see to lunch and then settle in the kitchen, and write. When I looked up I could see "my" mountains. I could hear my family and volunteers building, or working down in the meadow, reclaiming it from forty years of neglect.

The book grew. Back in the wintry city, our new house provided me with a wood stove to feed, and endless cups of tea. I sit at the kitchen table, a window behind me and a window in front, and I write.

Of course, there were births to go to, volunteer organizations to run, and family to feed. But when I look back on that winter, I remember with pleasure my fingers moving over the keyboard, and my mind searching for the right word and the most accurate description

Writing kept me going through my winter blues, through the ups and downs of family life, and into the spring. Tickets were bought again for the summer and I found myself looking at my mountains again, with an almost completed manuscript on the screen.

But that summer, my laptop died, and no intensive care was available in the small neighboring town. I focused on other things and took a break from writing. In the fall, thanks to a friendly geek, I retrieved everything and started working again - and two years after I started, I had a finished book! I thought that was it! My work was over!

When you make a baby, your work is far from over when the child is born. Now I am raising the child - preparing it to send it out into the world. I hope it can stand on its own. I will accompany it, of course. I will let everyone know that I am responsible for any errors, omissions, miscalculations. Essentially, though, it will be independent of me. It will (hopefully!) be read by people who don't know or care who I am - they are not reading a book so that they can be my friend.

To help send it on its way, I have sent out my book to a few reviewers "in the field". I am wondering if anyone else is interested in giving it a look-over and providing me with comment and blurbs.