I’m going back to where it all started. Well, not all the way back because, for the life of me, I can’t remember the stories I wrote before I was ten years old. But, I do remember writing poems and lyrics starting somewhere around my middle school or freshmen years. At the time, I wrote what I couldn’t say. I was so shy, I couldn’t speak my thoughts in a comprehensive way. I discovered as I wrote more and more, that I liked doing it. I like playing with words and creating something that could both pull emotion and be a message.
It wasn’t until I was a mother in my early twenties that I decided to write a novel. I didn’t know at the time that this was my purpose taking it’s first giant leap. As always happens when I decide to write, I had an idea that expanded into more.
I knew I wanted to write about a woman named Emma Lee Chandler. If I had had another daughter, her name would have been Emma Lee. Chandler was the maiden name of my grandmother that had passed away a year or two before the book was fianlly published. I knew she had to be single, successful, and on a journey to find herself.
The book, Emma’s Journey, takes place during the Fall in a fictional town called Autumnville. I placed the town in North Carolina because I wanted the smell of burning leaf piles, crisp cool air, and a fashionable scarf to wear as one should during the Fall months. From the first day I started writing the book, to the day I published it, it took fourteen years to complete. As one of my friends likes to say, life got lifey and I would put the book away.
Glorious things happened with the publishing of this book. I became what I had dreamed of becoming, an author. I wrote more and more and more and more. I wrote whatever was in my heart and on my mind. I wrote all the time. I wrote until my writing world stopped spinning and life got real lifey again.
Ever since then, I have struggled producing a good story, poem, or lyric. I had a story tucked away in my drawer that I had written, but instead of pursuing it and publishing it, I let it be forgotten. It wasn’t until I woke up one morning with that story on my mind, that it came out of the drawer to finally be worked on. I didn’t know it at the time, but that story was trying to tell me something I had forgotten and become deaf to. It’s been a year or maybe a little more now since I took The Heart of Alpine out of the desk drawer, but it was only this past week that I finally understood what it was trying to tell me. All the writing I have attempted in the last five years was writing that does not suit me. I was writing outside of myslef. I was trying to be the writer I’m not. I was trying to force my story when I knew better than to do that. So, last week I decided to stop forcing something that shouldn’t be. Instead, I’m going to honor the writer I’m supposed to be and write the story being told to my heart and mind just like I used to. I came to this decision partially due to the affrimation of some of my readers last week. Through their words, I was reminded my specific writing style serves the purpose I was trying so hard to force into another writing style. As a thank you to those readers, I’m adding an excerpt of Emma’s Journey, the first novel I published, to this blog. Please enjoy and share your thoughts with me.
Chapter One
Emma Chandler didn’t know a living soul in Autumnville, North Carolina, a beautiful town with a Mayberry-like atmosphere. She had never been to Autumnville while David was alive, and now, she sat at his grave—as she had done for the past two mornings—among the freshly fallen leaves, knowing she was being watched by the cemetery caretakers.
They were a couple of cute old men. She knew they wondered why she had been there these three days. Picking up a bunch of leaves in her hands, she smiled to herself. It probably was strange that she had come to the cemetery three days in a row. If she was honest with herself, she would admit she was afraid of what she was about to do.
The first day, she came to the cemetery to say goodbye to David officially. She ended up staying over an hour talking and crying to the tombstone inscribed with David’s name and life span on this earth. She didn’t intend to come to the cemetery the next day, but her car seemed to take her there on its own—just as it did today.
“How am I supposed to move on and do this when I can’t talk to you anymore? You were always so good at listening. You put up with so much from me, David. How am I supposed to just do this without you?”
Emma let the leaves fall from her hands as she raised them up to touch the headstone that still held the cold from the night before. She traced his name with her finger—David Lovewell. As tears formed in her eyes, she let them fall freely to the earth that held David’s body. “I love you, David. I know I told you that many times, but I wonder if you knew how much I really meant it. I was looking forward to seeing you in New Mexico next month. We always had a great time when we were able to get together. I don’t understand why you’re not here. I don’t understand why God would take such a good man away so soon.
