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.

         

A Novel, Cat Fantasy, and Letter

Hello All, on this rainy Sunday here in the Midwest. The two-year drought has ended with waterlogged soil. Forecasters predict two sunny days this week, so while farmers plow, I’ll weed the shrub garden. Before doing that, however, I’d like to share three things about my writing life.

         In March, I read the draft of the Bronze-Age Greece manuscript Three Roads Diverged, which I began to write back in 1994 after a three-week trip to Greece, financed by my earning from A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story. This draft used up nearly 70, 000 words and yet represented only a third of the story.  Given that, a completed first draft might comprise 210,000 words. That’s twice as long as most presses want to publish for a first-time novelist.            

        Considering that, I’ve decided to write three shorter books. By this time next year, I hope to have completed the ending to Book 1 and to have edited, rewritten, and polished it.  

A 1996 photograph of my cousin Mary Ann (right)

and myself by the flower garden

behind my home in Stillwater, Minnesota.

Note the T-shirt I’m wearing.

I’ve completed Book 1 of a cat-fantasy trilogy and have half of both Book 2 and Book 3 done. Fortunately, Judy King—the gifted artist who captured Dulcy’s sweetness in A Cat’s Life—had the time to do the art for Book 1. Each of the seventeen pencil sketches she sent me yesterday displays her creative wit. And the cover she’s designed is as inviting as the one she did for A Cat’s Life.

Last week, Judy Healey, the twice-published historical novelist and friend who is reading The Reluctant Spy, sent me an e-mail that made my day. As I’ve explained before, I started the Palestine novel thirteen years ago and Judy read an early draft. After reading the first few chapters of the present draft, here’s what she had to say:

Dee:

 At long last I'm reading your book...about 40 pages in.

          It is very engaging and I'm hooked. It is slow going because I am making notes on pages . . . all pretty minor stuff. But the writing is very good and I think the book has improved 100% from an earlier version I read some years ago.

          I'm going to do the first 100 pages and mail them to you. At the end I'll also have a short memo on overview stuff. . . . It will be into next week when I mail the first set. But congratulations.

          We can talk publishing strategies later. Love, Judy

You can appreciate why I’m pleased. Judy is an accomplished historical novelist. If she sees some worth to this draft then I’m content that I’m growing as a writer. That doesn’t mean of course that any agent will want to represent it or any publisher publish it. However, the fact that Judy praises it helps me know that my writing does have some merit.

For most of my adult life, I’ve considered myself a hack. My writing seemed so prosaic next to the writers I read. To my surprise, many of you have complimented my writing as seen in my on-line memoir blog. So because of you, I’ve stopped comparing myself to the fine writers I read and simply accepted that I am a storyteller and that my stories speak to others. I thank you all for this gift you’ve given me. Peace.

On the Road to Thebes

Last week I shared my Amazon Breakthrough Novel pitch with you and asked for your response. Several of you liked it as is; others gave me excellent suggestions for what might make it more intriguing to an agent. This coming week I’m going to begin honing that pitch to use in agent query letters. In a future posting I’ll share with you the process of finding agents to whom I might send a letter.

         Today, however, I want to return to the novel on which I’m now working—Three Roads Diverged. Two weeks ago I shared with you the research I did back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Let’s pick up from there.

         Crown published A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story in October 1992 and then sold rights to publishers in China, Japan, Korea, and Germany. The advances and royalties enabled me to purchase a new Mac and a printer, take six months off from freelancing, and travel to Greece to do research.

Here I am on the road between Thebes and Delphi.

        

         I’d wanted to see Greece, especially Thebes, since sixth grade when our class studied Ancient History. In late 1947 when Sister Mary McCauley introduced us to Greece, I saw Thebes on a map. Suddenly a frisson of remembrance about that city-state gripped me. In the depths of my mind, I could see ancient Thebes; my senses knew it. That was my first déjà vu experience.

         In November 1993, forty-six years after my introduction to the Bronze Age, I flew to Greece with a friend. For three weeks, we visited many of the sites I knew would be part of Three Roads Diverged. We rented a car. My friend drove; I navigated. We visited Athens, Knossos, Thebes, Delphi, Dodona, Olympia, Pylos, Mycenae, Lerna, Tiryns, Nauplia, and Epidaurus.          

         With a small camera I took pictures, as did she, of all these places. As the months pass, I’ll share with you some of the ruins I visited. Sometimes the photographs will be blurred because I really knew nothing about framing a scene. However, they will show you the sites about which I’ll be writing.

This is the path at the foot of the Parthenon in Athens.

When we flew home in late November, I began to write. For six months I used all the research I’d done to produce the beginnings of a first draft for the novel I hoped would one day be published.  

         Then in June 1994, I ceased to write. Why? Because the words of a fellow writer had burst the bubble of belief I had in myself about being able to write anything well, much less a novel. From then until now, that draft—the first third of the proposed novel—moldered on the computer, awaiting the click of reactivation.

         Then, two weeks ago, I printed out what I had—some 60,000 words. For nearly twenty years, I’d expected the novel—if ever completed—would divide itself naturally into three sections that would reflect the three Oedipus plays written by Sophocles.

         Using those three dramas as a foundation for the arc of Antigone’s life, I’d weave a story of who she was, what she did, and why. I’d search out the definitions that prompted her actions. By doing so, I planned to fill out the bare outlines of her life as given in Sophocles’ plays.

         His was the skeleton; I’d provide flesh, blood, tears, and sweat. Antigone would be given lungs with which to speak to a new audience. She’d be given a mind with which to enthrall us. A heart to woo us.

         As I read those 60,000 words these past two weeks, I’ve succumbed to her charms. Now I’ve realized how best to present her life. I’ll share that realization with you in the next couple of weeks. Peace.

Researching Bronze Age Greece

Last Sunday I asked a favor of all of you who read this blog: I needed more reviews for A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story and A Cat’s Legacy and asked if you’d help me get them.

         While asking for reviews, I also reflected on my lack of a platform—at least one dependent on page views of my two blogs.         

         The fourteen encouraging comments you left on last week’s posting have been so helpful. You complimented both books, which many of you have already read and reviewed. You stood behind reviews you’d written for them, offered to write a posting about how one of the books had helped you in a time of grief, and in general offered me your continued support as I try to get both books into the hands of readers.

         In addition, one of you ordered copies of both books, two of you have already left reviews on Amazon, and three of you offered suggestions for how to increase my page views. It’s now time to consider what direction to take. I’ll share my decision with you when I’ve made it, but for now I simply want to say to all of you a heartfelt “Thank you” for responding with such good will and creativity to my request for help.

         Today I’m posting about the new manuscript on which I’m now working: Three Roads Diverged. It explores questions about definition: Why do we let others define us? What happens when we cast aside those definitions? Does our integrity depend on resisting being defined by others? And finally how old does someone have to be to walk away from the definitions families impose?

         The novel, which takes place in Bronze Age Greece circa 1250 BCE, demands research on my part. I began this research back in the late 1980s with the study of classical Greek. 

          That was not the language spoken during Greece’s Bronze Age, but it would, I thought, introduce me to the language in which the great plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides had been written and to their cadence and syntax. I hoped both would lodge themselves in my unconsciousness and influence the way I wrote.

Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides

         Those renowned Greek dramatists used the ancient myths of their land as subject matter for their plays. I’d decided to use those myths also. So exploring the plays of these classical dramatists in the original language seemed appropriate to me.

The ancient theater of Delphi.

         To begin, I studied classical Greek for two quarters at the University of Minnesota and then continued my studies through correspondence courses from the University of Wisconsin.

         I never became proficient in speaking the language because of my auditory learning disability, but I did begin to understand syntax as I translated from Greek to English and English to Greek. Moreover I began to appreciate the way classical Greek writers approached their subject in both histories and plays. To write authentically, I needed to learn how those early Greeks thought.

         Beginning in the late 1980s, I have purchased many books on Greece’s Bronze Age and on the city/states of the time like Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Athens, and Thebes; the flora and fauna of Greece; religion; typography; law; arts and crafts; the role of women and men; mythology, and any other subject matter that explored the world at the time. I now have a library of over a hundred scholarly works on Bronze Age Greece.

The Lion Gate at Mycenae.

         I’ll be working on this manuscript for at least two years. My postings on this blog will reflect my progress. Next week I’ll share with you how I began to write back in the early 1990s. Have a good week. Peace.