Sunday, May 19, 2013

Synopsis of One Writer's Life



Warning: This is a long posting. You may want to bypass it until you have a cup of tea and a scone in hand for leisurely reading!!!
         After leaving the convent on Christmas Eve 1966 at age 30, I collapsed in my parents’ home and simply stared into space. The next year, because of a friend’s graciousness, I was offered work as an editor at a Dayton, Ohio, publishing house that produced Catholic weekly readers called “messengers.” I worked as the religion editor for My Little Messenger, a publication for first and second graders.         
         For the next seventeen years I taught briefly in Dayton and in Claremont, New Hampshire, and studied for a master’s degree. The rest of the time I worked as an editor and writer, first for Pflaum in Dayton and then for Winston Press in Minneapolis.
         Beginning in 1973, I worked myself up from editor, to co-director of the Winston trade department, to director of its curriculum department. By 1984, I was working fourteen hour days: eight at the office and six each evening at home. Exhaustion finally took its toll, and in mid-July of 1984, I resigned from my position to become a freelance line editor, copy editor, and curriculum developer.
         I freelanced until my retirement in 2001. During those seventeen years, I completed projects for a number of Catholic publishers as well as small presses throughout the United States. I also began teaching professional editing in evening and Saturday classes at the University of Minnesota, the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, and Metropolitan University.
         During those seventeen freelance years, I set an hour aside each morning for my own creative writing. I’d begun writing, as all of us probably do, in grade school. The Sisters of Mercy taught me the basics and I became enamored of words and their power to paint pictures.
         In college, my mentor became Sister Scholastica—a Benedictine. She encouraged me to let my imagination soar, and I wrote short stories, fantasies, essays, and poetry before entering the convent in June 1958. However, for the next eight and a half years, the convent offered no time for writing and I lost any interest I had in expressing myself with words.
         That continued until I became a freelancer in 1984—so for twenty-six years I did no writing of my own stories. Then, when I became a freelancer, I suddenly got the idea for a romance. As I’ve posted before, I wrote two romances and they were “duds.” But when Dulcy, the cat with whom I’d lived for seventeen and a half years, died in 1989, she gave me the story of our life together and I began to write again. 

Dulcy and me. 
         For the past twenty-nine years, I began one thing after another, but that demon of perfectionism has kept me from completing much of anything—the words just never seemed to be anything more than mundane.
         And yet, as I sit here today I realize that I have finished a few things and I’m eager to work on others. Here’s what I’ve complete in final draft—edited and polished. The first three listings have been published.
·      A Cat’s Life (Dulcy’s memoir)
·      A Cat’s Legacy (Dulcy’s gift of twelve habits of highly successful cats)
·      Twenty children’s books for Capstone Press under the name Dee Ready and the pseudonym Anna O’Mara.
·      The Gift of Bastet Net (Book 1 of the Great God of Cats fantasy series)
·      The Reluctant Spy (a novel that takes place in first-century Palestine)
·      A Multitude of Angels (the text for a series of photographs by Judy King who did the art for Dulcy’s memoir and who is doing the art for The Gift of Bastet Net)
One of the sketches for The Gift of Bastet Net.
And here is the additional writing I’ve done, but not completed, during the past twenty-four years:
·      A first draft for the novel Winter Tapestry, about four ex-nuns.
·      A first draft of Three Roads Diverged. This is Book 1 of a trilogy I plan that takes place in Bronze-Age Greece.
·      Half of Book 2 of the Great God of Cats fantasy series—Warriors of Bastet-Net.
·      Half of Book 3 of the Great God of Cats fantasy series—Prayers to Bastet-Net.
·      Drafts for two picture books for children.
·      Several chapters for a memoir by the four cats with whom I lived after Dulcy died.
·      Two romances.
·      More than 200 postings that will become part of a single memoir or of a trilogy of memoires: early life, convent, post convent.
         So, on this day, when I woke up and felt a little down. A little blue. A little annoyed with myself for being so lazy and for getting so little done. On this day . . . I’m realizing that I have been true to the longing I have to write. Thank you for all the encouragement you’ve given me through the past months. No one could ask for better and more helpful support. Peace.

PS: Mount Saint Scholastica, the convent I joined, is celebrating its sesquicentennial this year. The nuns there have invited all of us who left the convent to come back for a celebration this coming weekend. I’m eager to go and to meet friends I haven’t seen in 47 years. Given this, I won’t be posting here next Sunday.
         

25 comments:

  1. You've got an amazing body of work. I just have such a feeling that more and more of those on your list will be getting published, probably much sooner that you think.

    I enjoyed reading your synopsis. You've done such a variety of writing. I think in my looming retirement I am going to be pushing myself to branch out into other types of writing, and I'll use you as my example.

    Enjoy your time at the reunion- what complete fun it sounds like!

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    1. Dear Shelly, looking at the two lists I realize that I have written quite a bit. But there's a part of me that so wishes I'd finished more and had more published. Yet, perhaps what you say is true and more will be published "sooner" than I think.

      I read a comment of yours today on another blog--I think it was Dr. Kathy McCoy's. In your comment you said you weren't planning on writing for publication. I hope that as time passes and you settle into retirement, you'll think about that some more. Your writing soars. Peace.

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    2. Dee: Thank you so much for your kind words. Very honestly, though, I just don't know what I'd write! It may sound silly, but with all the ideas I have, thinking about bringing one through to getting it to a publication level leaves me a little flummoxed. But I'll continue to think about it, and with all the wonderful encouragement you've given me, maybe something will eventually catch hold!

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  2. Oh, Dee, you are so right that you have accomplished an incredible amount and stayed true to your desire to write. You have every right to be proud of yourself and what you've brought into the world. I hope you will also write about this celebration. You are a gift to me, and I suspect to many more. I'm glad I've "met" you through the written word. Peace to you, also. And hugs. :-)

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    1. Dear DJan, as I said in a recent comment on one of your blogs, I'm like your husband--while you've been out skydiving and walking and hiking, all of which are your passions--I've been dreaming up stories and writing them. Now if only I finish some of them!

      I will write about the celebration. I hope to do so on my Wednesday blog next week.
      I'm so looking forward to it. Peace.

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  3. You've accomplished a great deal. I'm proud to know you and call you my friend.

    Love,
    Janie

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    1. Dear Janie, what's so clear to me as I speak with my friends in Minnesota and those, like you, who are blogging friends, is that we have accomplished a lot. We've walked on different paths and our journeys have had different waystations, but along the way to our passage into whatever is beyond, we're all dreamed and felt the conflicts that arise when we try to live justly and to walk with an appreciation of the deep down goodness in everyone. Peace.

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  4. Dee, look at how much you have accomplished. You know that I love your writing, you are the best as far as I'm concerned. Enjoy the reunion.

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    1. Dear Inger, your appreciation of my writing means so much to me. You've helped me come to believe that I can write and that what I write is of interest to others. Thank you. Peace.

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  5. You have accomplished so much and are such an interesting individual!

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    1. Dear Nancy, thank you for your kind words. And speaking of interesting, I'd say you surely are. I'd so like one day to meet your mom also. Peace.

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  6. You are nothing like as kind, or even as nice to yourself as you are to others are you?
    That is a phenomenal body of work, and it is on-going. Which is truly impressive and more than a little awe-inspiring.
    I hope your reunion is full of love and magic memories. I am looking forward to hearing about it.

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    1. Dear EC, well, others have said the same thing about me. Both friends and counselors have suggested to me repeatedly that I be as kind to myself as I am to others. But I think I grew up thinking that something was really wrong in me because if I'd been a good person, an interesting person, my parents wouldn't have gone off to Parsons and left me behind when I was in kindergarten. That was, I know, the seminal event of my life and it continues to influence me. I suspect that I'll be dealing with abandonment issues even while I'm lying on my deathbed!!!!

      And yes, I'm hope to post about the reunion the last Wednesday of the month.
      Peace.

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  7. You have written such a wide variety of things & I have enjoyed everything that I have been privileged to read. One thing I can't understand is, if you taught professional editing, why don't you have more confidence when editing your own work?

    Have a wonderful time at the reunion!!

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    1. Dear Fishducky, I know how to edit the work of others because I can be an objective viewer. But my own work is too close to me and so I can't get out of the copse and stand on the hill and look at the forest in its entirety. Many writers have this problem.

      I can easily copyedit what I write because I know "The Chicago Manual of Style" backward and forward. But line editing--dealing with character development and sustained tension and suspense and a plot that moves steadily forward--all that pretty much eludes me when I'm working on a novel.

      I can manage to see the arc of a 600-word posting on my Wednesday blog but that, as I've said before, takes me about 2 1/2 hours to write and edit and polish. Only then have I captured the story. Peace.

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  8. Dee...your busy life in a nutshell. So much has been accomplished.

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    1. Dear Lori, now it's your life that seems busy to me--the horses, the art, the cooking, the visiting. Wholeness there. Peace.

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  9. And a life so full of achievement, Dee. Enjoy your reunion.

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    1. Dear Perpetua, I'm so looking forward to possibly visiting with friends (ex-nuns) whom I haven't seen since I left the convent in 1966--so forty-seven years. And, vain person that I am, I've lost 18 pounds in the past seven months and had my hair cut today. I want to look my best at 77!!! Peace.

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  10. I am so in awe of your imagination and would so love to read a published version of your Palestine and Greek novels! For a long time I though I had that 'one' book in me, but I have come to understand that my talent is not in the imaginative -- I don't have the 'staying' power -- which obviously you do have -- in spades. I hope you have a wonderful reunion with your old friends and with your past. I am sure we are in for a special treat when you report back to us!

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    1. Dear Broad, I do so hope that I get the Palestine novel as well as the Greek trilogy published. I may need to self-publish them. Of course, two parts of that trilogy aren't even started yet, but I know the storyline and have done a lot of the research for them.

      A week from tomorrow--the last Wednesday of the month--I hope to share the celebration with all of you on my other blog. Peace.

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  11. Wow! That's a lot of writing! Kudos!
    I'd especially love to read Winter Tapestry with the four ex-nuns. Enjoy your visit and see you when you get back. ;)

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    1. Dear Rita, I'm going back to "Winter Tapestry" and see what's worth keeping in it and what I can do to make it suspenseful as there is a mystery to it. I'm glad it sounds interesting to you. Please tickle Karma's chin for me! Peace.

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  12. See--that's what you need to realize--YOU'RE amazing!!! Look at everything you've written. I don't personally know of anyone who has written as much as you have. And I know a lot of authors.

    You're so inspiring :)

    P.S. I wish I could read the romances. I bet they're wonderful--everything you write is.

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    1. Dear Elisa, so many writers have written---and gotten published!!!!!!--so much more than I've ever typed. But thank you for the words of support!

      About those romances. I don't even think I have them on the computer anymore! They're "gone with the wind!" Peace.

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