I supposed it had to happen.

I sure do wish that it hadn’t.

A couple of years ago, I was speaking at a conference, at one of the best-respected writing centers in the world, and an audience member asked me, “Are you ever tempted to go back and work on one of your unpublished novels?”

Before I could stuff my words back into my mouth with both hands, I heard myself saying, “I don’t really have an unpublished novel …”

The audience gave out with a general groan, but I was momentarily one of the people groaning the loudest. I looked around for the source of the lightning that was surely poised to strike me. What had I done? Writers are nothing if not superstitious, and I had just invited down on my head the equivalent of the Curse of the Cat People.

And so it transpired.

I’m deeply attached to the story I’m writing. The characters are authentic and the plot not only has heart and guts, but a couple of twists worthy of the Millennium Force rollercoaster at the Cedar Point amusement park. I’m at the point of getting a 900 number and asking lovers of story to call me to call me and pay a dollar for me to tell them all about it: “One of the most successful true crime podcasters in the world, Daley Curran decide to dig into the story that got her hooked, the murder of three young sisters and the man whose heart was crushed when he literally stumbled across the crime scene, who also happens to be Daley’s father. But Daley quickly learns that this story will put her career, her family, and her very life in jeopardy …”

Wouldn’t you like to read that book? I certainly would, if I could write it. I’ve started the first 25 pages eight times over the past months; and I suspect that even setting that part to rights will take about as long as an African elephant’s pregnancy (That’s 22 months, by the way, and if you know my publisher, please, please don’t tell.)

I have a reputation in this biz for being someone who writes with care but with dispatch. My first agent used to call me “Quickdraw.”

When I tell my brother, he says, “Maybe this one will be even bigger than The Deep End of the Ocean.” (Talk about the Curse of the Cat People.)

When I told one of my kids, trying to coerce him into giving me a motivational speech, he said, “Think of yourself as training for a marathon. Start by running a block. Then two blocks. Then a mile …”

I took that last seriously. I went right into the bedroom, put on my exercise shoes, and watched three back-to-back re-runs of Criminal Minds.

What has become of me?

 

1. I’m washed up. I don’t know how to do this anymore. This notion kindled such fear in my guts that I sketched out the whole plan for my nextnovel, which I showed to my innocent agent, who said, “Well, you could work on this one first …” I’m sure his ears still ache from my wailing.
2. I don’t know the story well enough. (Feh; that doesn’t even fool me.)
3. I haven’t done enough research. (Double feh.)
4. I want my publisher to say it’s “long-awaited …” No! We all know what the fate of “long-awaited” art forms is – that is, they’re usually not worth the wait.
5. I want to wait until my youngest is on his own. (He’s twelve.)
6. I want to wait until my eldest’s first child arrives. (He isn’t even dating anyone.)
7. I’m afraid of failing.
8. I’m afraid of succeeding.
9. I need to lose weight first.
10. My finger hurts.

It’s now time, gentle reader, for the big hopeful finish – the part where I say, but all these obstacles are only proof that this could be the best-crafted, best-nuanced, and yes, best-received novel I’ve ever written, and, in the end, it will all be worth it.

Which is what they said about labor and delivery; and let me tell you, if I could have given birth without my having to be present for it, and still had a great kid, I would definitely have gone that route.

So I’m going to spare you the bravura hopeful finale. I’m going to leave you instead with this pledge: By the time I next write in this space, I’ll have completed this novel.

It will be suspenseful. (I, personally, am on the edge of my seat.)

It will be psychologically harrowing. (It already has been.)

And it will resonate. (That only means making a loud noise.)

It will be everything I hope for it to be.

Everything I hope for it to be can be summed up in one word, and it’s not “bestseller.”

It’s “finished.”

The true takeout from this small essay is self-evident, especially if you love writing or if you ever hope to write. The way to it never gets easier. The will to do it falters, but never extinguishes. The wish to do it never goes away.

People say it didn’t happen.

Not just a couple of people, but quite a few, say that I’m a fake.

People say I’m a fool, and I’m selfish, and I’m conceited, and I’m kidding the public, and currying sympathy, and crying poor on the outside while cackling on the inside.

I found out just the other day that people say I’m in the fiction business, when it comes to the facts of my own life.

Quite by coincidence, three good friends on three separate occasions told me that the public perception of my financial downfall more than five years ago was nothing like what I perceived it to be. I always believed that most people sympathized, at least a little, and hoped for the best for me. This turns out not to be true.

Those who explained this to me, by the way, are not the kind of friends who can’t wait to tell you that you’ve put on weight. They’re good friends, genuine and caring, who’ve given their personal and professional support to me for many years.

One of them said he was stunned by people’s comments. He called them “heartless.” When he defended me, detractors called him a pushover. Another friend told me bluntly that I should have known how skeptical people were about my tale of woe. She said that I was “tone deaf.”

People say, it turns out, that I didn’t have a great deal of money stolen – or if I did, it was because I was greedy and I asked for it.

People say it wasn’t really everything we had.

People (a few people, among them the IRS agent we’ve dealt with over our hideous tax woes) that I couldn’t have become so well known and so successful and not have money hidden somewhere, in numbered bank accounts, in other countries – in my wooden shoes, I guess.

People said, “Pride goeth before a fall.”

People said, “Greed is its own reward.”

People said, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

People said, “Easy come, easy go.”

People said, “Everyone gets a comeuppance.”

People said, “She was like one of those lottery winners who throws it all away.”

People said, “There’s more to it than she’s saying.”

People said, “If she posts pictures on Facebook of her frolicking in Ireland, she’s not doing that bad.”

People said, “If she’s having such a tough time, why does she have all those kids?”

People said, “She has to have recovered by now. She should get over it.”

I never knew.

I never suspected.

I had no idea at all that anyone doubted my word.

I never knew people thought I was prideful.

I especially never knew that anyone thought that the way I made my money was easy.

You’re not supposed to let other people define you. You’re supposed to really believe that what people about you usually has everything to do with them, and may not necessarily have much to do with you. I would tell my children, no one has permission to make you feel small. But it’s harder to take your own advice. For someone who depends on goodwill for her living – that is, the good intentions of people who read – perception is reality. So hearing these things brought me to my knees. None of them is true. Most of them are grossly unfair. Still, it was stunning to think that I wandered around in a bubble, thinking the people I met were on my side.

I do understand that my calamities seem extreme. As the third friend explained, it verges on impossible that a money theft and a property tax problem and then a rogue, hateful IRS encounter could all happen to the same person. It seems impossible that they could all happen to someone who’d already gone through being a young widow and raising kids on her own. It’s too much bad luck.

I get that.

When you write stories suggested by real life, you have to tone it down, because real life beggars the imagination. Real life sometimes really is too much. Real life sometimes does defy the credibility budget for a story, which is why I tell my students sometimes that the worst way to justify a story is by saying that it happened that way in real life. Further, much worse things have happened to people than losing all their money. I’m grateful every day that what I lost was not my children’s health, or my health.

However, anyone who says, well, it’s only money … has some, at least a little bit. It’s not only money. It’s safety. It’s security. It’s a little bit of a windbreak in a gale of a world.

For a long time, I didn’t even have a little bit.

For a long time, I had considerably less than nothing.

For a long time, I had hideous credit debt because I made the foolish decision to try to keep the older kids in college by paying part of their school bills with credit cards, until they could scramble for student loans. I couldn’t bear that they would have to drop out because of my mishap.

Many people I’d helped out couldn’t help me. Others wouldn’t. Several, and I bless them, did. It turns out (because I asked) that even my own brother didn’t realize how much I’d lost, or how bad off I was. Neither did any of my in laws. I didn’t spell it out. I should have.

Even my brother assumed it was all better now.

It’s not.

Debt is a luge that gathers speed and danger as it hurtles downhill. I am only now, or at least soon, trying to stop the desperate descent. Then I’ll make my way up the hill.

For the record, when all those kids (except for the last two, my daughters born in Ethiopia) were born to me or came to our family through adoption, we had enough to support them well.

The adoption of our daughters was nearly completed when all our money was taken, and no further fees were required. Good sense would have demanded that we stop out. But good behavior demanded that we proceed, since we had given our word and to renege would have left a stain on my character – no matter how justified it would have been.

For the record, for all those years that we sank deeper into more serious need, my husband did not work. I still don’t know completely why he did not work. He was healthy and capable, and he can’t fully explain it to me. For the record, the investment decision was his. Why didn’t I stop him? I didn’t know any better. This wasn’t Bernie Madoff, making outrageous claims to his clients. It was another guy, another crook, not a household name. If you go to the dentist, do you assume the diploma on the wall is real? Or do you investigate it?

My husband made the choice. I went along with it. He was foolish, and I didn’t know any better.

Most marriages would have broken up.

Perhaps this one should have.

Our children, however, had endured a terrific blow, required to give up their home, their school, their friends, their lives, literally to pile into the car and drive off, the night before Thanksgiving. I didn’t want them to lose their dad as well. Their dad loves them very much, and they love him. My anger would have been revenged – for a month, for a year. Then I’d have added one more bizarre statistic to my resume as a person: I’d be the mother of nine kids who got divorced.

But a wise pal of mine who’s a counselor says that you don’t get divorced when you want to, you get divorced when you have to. My husband isn’t evil, or even bad, or even mean to me. He trusts too many people. He still thinks most people are good.

I don’t know if it’s too late to heal all the wounds between us. I try, but sometimes not as hard as I could.

Some days I don’t know anything.

I do know that I am on the level, and that my life won’t ever be the same.

For the record, anytime you see me on Facebook frolicking in exotic or even pleasant places, I’ve been paid to go there, to lecture or to teach. Whoever hired me has helped pay the way for one of my younger kids to come along. Otherwise, it would be difficult for me to afford to take them anywhere, even to visit relatives in the Midwest, even to go camping. A well-heeled friend helped buy their plane tickets when I got to teach at Disney World. Should I have made it clear that I wasn’t there under my own auspices? People don’t like to hear about a long, unrolling mess. Even tragedy can be boring. So I try to put on a happy face, and sometimes it even works.

For the record, it was never easy come, easy go.

I made my living the old-fashioned way. I earned it. And seeing it all gone was about as easy as having bowel surgery in the woods with a stick.

I was never prideful.

I was never greedy.

I was the same person when I had money as I was before I had any money and as I am now. I guess this is a rant, but I have to admit I feel I have a right to a rant. I’m not the best person in the world but I’m a decent sort. I try to be good. I try to be happy, and one thing I know is true: I would never, not ever, not ever, ever kick anyone who was down. If you thought those things about me, and especially if you said them, maybe it made you feel better about your own life.

I hope it did not make you feel better.

Shame on you.

 

I know that people blog from blog sites and from group sites and from social media sites.

I love all of those things, but I love my website best.

Ten years ago, when my website first went “up,” only a handful of authors had websites where readers could visit, and see photos, and order books (but not, regrettably, get coffee). I consider all the ones who filled indebted to my leadership. Something about having a home on the web appeals to me. This is my real estate, and dedicated to my stories and thoughts, a clubhouse for me and my readers (and again, why is there no button for espresso?) Please write to me here, and suggest things that I can “blog” about, and what kind of news you want. Very soon, you’ll see the schedule for my upcoming book tour dates for Two if By Sea, and, if I’m coming to a city near you for an event, please come out and say hello. Writing is all about the reader, and, if it gets lonely between books, it’s only when I can’t picture your face or hear your voice, written or spoken.

It’s been ten years, and every storefront needs a remodeling now and then, and this website just had a serious update. 

Come in and explore. Let’s pretend there is coffee.