Having children doesn’t always involve diapers and new mommies don’t always have kids. Sounds like I’m heading into a metaphor, doesn’t it? You got me.
To an empty-nester like me, motherhood is all about birthing books.
Of course conception is the most fun. A thought, an idea or a dream plays around in your mind pretending to be plots and titles, scenes and scenarios. But until one germinates it is just fantasy.
Writers, who entertain such titillation without a commitment to capture those thoughts on paper, or to develop them into publishable means, exist with the frustration and disappointment of a dreamer.
For years, my writing life was just that – until I got tired of staring at books and imagining my name on their spines.
I had become disgusted with my non-committal attitude toward my craft and exhausted by day dreams. Since my teen years, when a word winked at me or a phrase whispered in my ear, I, the willing prisoner, would stick my hands in the air and cry, Ok! I give up! I had no clue how to arrest the wild onslaught of creative energy.
Instead, I’d be carried away captive and existed in a cell of false belief that someday I would just morph into an author. I still have stacks of nothing books stuffed with unfertilized seeds – tales that will never be told.
When I finally got busy learning my craft and taking it seriously, I still had to fight off the temptation to sit and dream. I’d often get lost in thoughts of standing in a bookstore, reaching for my offspring, bound and stamped with my name, flipping through the leaves of the work of my days. I’d imagine the feel of its cover in my fingertips, squeezing it and stroking its letters in unbelief, thinking, did I give birth to this beautiful child?
The other fight I encountered by choosing self-discipline was the work itself. Give me the baby all bathed and wrapped in soft a cuddly blanket, resting contentedly in my arms and everyone around me saying, “What a beautiful baby!” Yes! That’s what I want! To drive to the bookstore, walk to the shelf and just pull my book off and see it complete, bound forever in its own identity. Forget the labor!
Then a fear emerged. What will I do when my child is grown and gone? How do I send my book off into the world wrapped in a box only to arrive at some publishing house where it may be shelved or thrown away, unread, unopened? How do I cope with the thrill and pain of watching it be read, then hearing all about its flaws and reasons why it’s not good enough to print – to be cut down, edited, critiqued and rejected by strangers? My precious child, of whom I labored day and night to create, I’d rather not give birth to you than to send you into a world so cruel and watch your life be so treated!
The 'Novel Vigilante'
Enough drama; authors become authors because they birth books. Authors become Moms when they raise books. And so I must engage in the shameless self-promotion of my first child. My novel, The ‘Novel Vigilante’ will be published later this month! Come see all my ‘kids’ at www.ccsemick.com.
doors & windows 