Category: Uncategorised (Page 2 of 16)

Love is Love

April 9, 2025 /

T.S. Eliot called April “the cruellist month.” Here, in Canada, that has certainly proven true with the weather. One day we are basking in sunshine and summer temperatures, the next an ice storm, or snow, or rain comes barrelling down, flattening flowers, breaking tree limbs, knocking out power lines and damaging roofs. 

Added to the cruelty of the weather is the uncertainty swirling over financial markets and world affairs. A ceasefire is announced and then broken. Medical workers and journalists in a war zone are killed. In Canada, we are in the midst of an election.

In the publishing world copyright issues, Artificial Intelligence, tariffs, and book banning create an unprofitable and frightening world for authors. Many wonder if they should continue to pour love and effort into fiction — especially romantic fiction.

Writers must each answer that question for themselves. 

But, for encouragement, I offer this bit of philosophy. I just finished reading a book with a very tangled and convoluted plot. People fell in love, or out of love. Parents and children and siblings had difficult relationships and unhappy lives. What seemed good often ended badly. What seemed wrong turned out to be uplifting. When I finished the book I had to reread it to find all the dropped threads and tie them together. But — the “moral” of the story was “love is love.”

As we struggle to find our footing in this shifting cultural landscape, I think it is worth remembering that “love is love.” When we ask “what’s the point?” Love is often the answer. Sometimes that is “boy-meets-girl” kind of love. Sometimes it is “the -lost-is-found” kind of love. Sometimes it is finding self-love in a damaged life.  For some, it is finding, and receiving, the love of God. For writers it may mean finding or rediscovering the love of craft. 

It seems to me, that the heart, in the end, is what drives our living. If the turmoil of our world is overwhelming, look deeply into your heart. There you will find an essence that offers solace. There, behind the baggage and disappointments of the mind, is peace. 

If you are a writer, write stories from that place — offer your understanding and your love to the world. Love is love and can heal even the most flawed of human beings. 

P.S. The cat pictures in this post are just to make you smile, and maybe remind you that pets offer their own form of love.

6 Ways to beat the Sophomore Slump

March 26, 2025 /

The sophomore slump refers to the sense of letdown experienced by second year college students. After the excitement and high dedication of their freshman year, second year looms as a bit of a grind — and their marks reflect that attitude. 

A similar phenomenon sometimes occurs with a writer’s second novel. The first story may have taken years, and too many re-writes to count. The author poured all of her heart and soul, skill and talent into that first work, determined to bring her best work to the publisher. But, having secured that first success, the second novel is sometimes a disappointment. The writing may be rushed, the plot trite and the characters a little flat. It’s still a good book, but it doesn’t live up to the promise of the first one.

I’ve been doing more reading than writing these past few weeks, and I think I’ve been reading those “less than” efforts. Perhaps that accounts for my disappointment with a couple of new books written by authors I hugely admire and enjoy. 

The first ho-hum response came from the latest in a very long series. This author is an auto-buy for me. I love her characters, her setting, her use of language, and her voice. But this latest offering felt a bit — stodgy. Hard to put my finger on exactly why I felt let down, but I suspect that “world famous author” is not getting a good hard edit. Some of the beautiful prose seemed to be there because it was beautiful prose, not because it advanced the plot. 

The second book in question was a new offering from an author with many fewer credits to her name. I have read them all and enjoyed them all, but none seems to live up to the promise of the first. The latest work, to my mind, is her weakest. Again, I ask why? In this case, it seemed to me that I was reading a late draft of the story, and not the polished final manuscript. This can happen when publisher and reader expectations push a writer into producing at a quicker pace than is comfortable for her. Or it could just be that this author is running out of ideas. Her characters were so similar to those in previous books they could almost be the same person but with the names changed. The romance threads seemed facile and shallow. The ending had a “they-came-home-tired-but-happy” feel about it. I got marked down for that in grade three.  I expect better from a multi-published author.

I didn’t set out to disparage these authors in this post. Rather, I was seeking to share lessons I’d learned about keeping my writing fresh. Here are my thoughts.

  • Refresh the characters. Even if they are returning characters used in a series, they need to grow and change — in exciting ways. Just making them older doesn’t heighten the tension. If an athlete is older, make the loss of physical prowess have an impact on his life and the story. Then his aging is germaine to the story.
  • Introduce a new element. If you write small town with the same characters in the same roles over a number of books, bring in a stranger. She can be like a stone thrown into the calm waters of your little town. Let the ripples impact all those stock characters. Unsettle your familiar, cozy small town. It’ll make a better story
  • Cut, cut, cut.  I’ve heard editors reject work for being “self-indulgent.” I think the books I referred to earlier fell into that trap. The author was indulging her love of language to create long, prose passages that read beautifully, but did not advance the story.
  • Take a break. When the words are hot off your pen, or keyboard, they sound like perfection itself. Enjoy that feeling. Walk around for a week or so, buoyed with the sense of accomplishment. Imagine yourself accepting awards for this marvellous book. Then re-read it with a cold eye.  Your masterpiece probably needs another edit.
  • If you have a trusted beta reader (not your mother) send the ms to her/him.
  • Listen to what s/he says. 

Sophomores and second books are not predestined to disappoint, but knowing the hazards should make students and writers alert to them. I look forward to the next offerings from my favourite authors, but if they continue to fall short, I’ll rethink my purchases. There is a saying in the writing world, “you are only as good as your last book.” Let’s make sure our last book is our best book.

Here, There, and Everywhere

March 5, 2025 /

Last month I published a post here about etyology — the study of the origins of words. Since then it seems I stumble over etyology, linguistics, syntax, idioms and the like at every turn. Even a book on music is talking about the rhythm and cadence of words as a tool to understanding how music affects our brains. Running  into this same concept over and over might be called the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon, or frequency illusion. 

Writers often discuss experiencing this phenomenon when they have an idea for a new story. Our creative juices my be sludgy and opaque for weeks, months or even years, then we get an idea, or even just the glimmer of an idea. Suddenly, we see that idea playing out all around us. On the flip side, it seems several authors get a similar idea at the same time. Is it something in world events that triggers a common notion? Is there really a god-like muse at play who plants a thought in a dozen minds to see if it will grow? 

I can’t answer that question, but I do know I’ve been running into language delights everywhere for the past few weeks. Here are a few instances:

  • At Bible Study, we heard about Jesus’ visit to Jericho. It would appear that Jericho, both ancient and modern,  is a nice place.”Why then,” I asked, “do we ‘wish someone to Jericho’ when we want them to go away to a not nice place?” No one but me knew the expression but I had read it in the works of L.M. Montgomery. So I looked it up and here is what I found. 

The expression “go to Jericho” comes to us from the Old Testament where it appears as a command by King David to his mistreated and dishonored envoys to King Hānun of the Ammonites. At some point, however—perhaps by the middle of the eighteenth century, to judge from the examples in Farmer & Henley, cited above—English speakers began to use it euphemistically to say “go to hell.” The expression may have persisted in some corner of the English-speaking world, but it does not appear to be in general use today.   Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present 

  • My next example came while watching the Canadian Men’s Curling Championships, known as “The Brier.” An announcer used the phrase “the straw that stirs my drink.” The other broadcasters were flummoxed, never having heard the expression before. So, once again, I looked it up and found

The most valuable or important person or thing in a system.                      The phrase is usually   attributed to baseball player Reggie Jackson.  At the time it was viewed as a boastful commentary about his importance that ruined his relationship with other players. 

  • My last example is a  simile rather than an idiom but the colourful language appealed to me. A book describing a woman trying to make a living on a stony, neglected farm said “she worked as hard as three sled dogs.” Anyone who has seen a team of sled dogs towing heavy loads, while running at speed can understand the reference. 

Using idioms and colourful phrases can distinguish an author’s voice, make her prose memorable, and add a sense of place and time to the writing. But such devices should be used sparingly. Too many and the work becomes a caricature. Sometimes that is the aim — think “Hee Haw”– but readers can be easily turned off if the language becomes hackneyed and trite. Think of idioms in your prose like salt in your stew — a little is essential, too much spoils it.

New Look at Morning Pages

February 19, 2025 /
VIRA

Last week my romance writers group, VIRA, held our Valentine’s brunch. It was a great time. Since COVID we’ve met mostly on-line so it was a real treat to meet up in person with my “tribe.” The room was loud, the laughter plentiful, encouraging words filled the air.  And that brings me to morning pages.

Writing Workshop

When I first began this writing journey, I diligently wrote morning pages because Julia Cameron said to, and so did Bobbi Hutchinson, the presenter at the very first romance writing workshop I attended. She said, “if you don’t know what to write, start with I remember . . .”  I revelled in those pages, enjoying the flow of words from my brain to my pen, playing with story ideas, creating characters who might or might not show up in a story. I practiced being a writer.

Menopause

But time passed, my writing time got shorter and my career stalled. Menopause gave me the gift of brain fog and stole half my vocabulary. Morning pages seemed a waste of time. It was so hard to drag words from my brain that I elected to use them only in my stories. And writing became all work and no play. As the years passed, I wrote less and less. My “career” died. 

Joy Cometh in the Morning

That brings me back to the VIRA party. I’d been keeping my “shameful” secret — the one about not writing — hidden from my writing colleagues. But, at the party, I told the truth. No one scorned me or pointed fingers. Instead, an old mentor suggested I write about something that I have held dear all my life. “I see passion there,” she said.  She was right. I’ve gone back to writing pages– sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon — in order to tell a story about myself that makes me smile, or weep, and sometimes elicits a wry chuckle.  The words are coming easier — not elequent, but serviceable. I look forward to time at my desk rather than avoiding it. I don’t even think about publishing or having a career. For now, I am thrilled to pick up my pen and write two hundred words that bring me joy.

Society’s greatest loss during COVID lockdowns was companionship. We all huddled in our corners. We did our best to substitute technology for human interaction. We wore masks, got vaccinated and did our level best to stay healthy. But that was then. This is now. For myself, and many others, the time has come to engage with human beings, friends or strangers. Ordering on-line is quick and easy, but grumbling about the weather with a store clerk is much more satifying to the psyche. And, having real, live-person chats with other writers is one of the best things an author can do for herself.

What about you, dear readers. Have you found your way back into the company of fellow humans? Do you avoid crowds or do you seek out like-minded enthusiasts and spend time together? How is your choice working out for you? I hope that whatever path you choose, you find joy in your days.

International Women's Day

Name that Word

February 5, 2025 /

As a writer, I’m fascinated with words. I love the way they sound. I love the weird spellings of the English language. I even have a list of “beautiful words” that includes lilac, haze, mauve, sigh, lullaby, lily, sly. . .   Notice how many soft consonants are in my list. Maybe it is that melodic (another favourite word) sound tht marks them as beautiful in my mind.

Among my favourite books are Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman, and Pip Williams’ The Dictionary of Lost Words. Both tell of the development of an English dictionary, how words were discovered and researched and used and, eventually, added to our word list. 

The study of words, and particularly their origin is called “etyology,” not to be confused with “entomology” which is the study of insects.  Notice the “ology” in both words. It means study of. Hence theology, astrology, geology, biology . . . etc.

Obviously, I could go on forever about words, but what caught my attention recently was the number of words (usually nouns) in our language that are actually the name of a person.  Did you know the word “Hansom” as used in a “Hansom Cab” is named for James Hansom (handsome), an English engineer who designed the vehicle?

Nathaniel Bigot (1575 -1660) was a Puritan preacher born in Ipswich. His intolerance and zeal were such that none of the sects of the Puritan religion would admit him to membership. He frequently stood up and began preaching at the Globe theatre during Shakespeare’s plays, railing against the vanity and depravity he perceived on the stage. For his pains, he was ejected from the theatre. A supporter of Cromwell, even that dour dogmatic found Bigot a nuisance and had him arrested. He was a staunch Parliamentarian who called for the execution of Charles I. He died of apoplexy when he saw Charles II entering London at the time of the Restoration. It is questionable whether his name was given to our word, “bigot” but he certainly embodied its meaning!

I’ve always considered gingham a very homey, wholesome pattern, but  one source tells me that  Martha Gingham (1580-1648) was a bawdy-house keeper who dressed her “girls” in clean petticoats and neat frocks of striped or checked cloth. So much for my preconceived notion!

Don’t forget the fourth Earl of Sandwich who bestowed his name on the snack we eat between slices of bread. There are several stories about him. In one, he is credited with sponsoring Captain James Cook’s voyages. In gratitude, Cook named the Sandwich Islands in his honour. In a less flattering story, the earl, who was an inveterate gambler,  didn’t want to interupt his play to eat. He created the sandwich so he could eat without getting his fingers greasy, and thus remain at the card table.

There are endless examples of men and women giving their names to the language. The examples I’ve  cited are historical, but just think of how we use “Google” as a verb. A Shirley Temple is a non-alcoholic drink, Reaganomics, an economic theory named after a former president of the United States, or Scrooge to describe a miser.

The study of words provides endless fascination for a wordsmith. I’d love to hear your favourite words, just add them to the comments section of this post.

 

 

5 Body Language Surprises

January 22, 2025 /

I had a very strange start to the year — I lost my voice. I don’t mean I lost my ability to sing or declaim from the stage. I mean I lost the ability to make any sound using my vocal cords. (Aphonia)  Never happened to me before and was, frankly, scary. Here’s how.

  • I couldn’t call for help. If I fell in a ditch, I couldn’t cry out. I had to attract attention by banging things, or throwing things, or physically assaulting my hearers. Not an efficient way to get help quickly. 
  • By the same token, I couldn’t sound a warning. When I saw danger approaching someone else, I could not call out an alarm. It made me feel helpless and culpable in another’s misfortune.
  • My sense of identity suffered. I am a singer, my voice has always been an important part of my make-up. To suddenly be silenced struck at the core of my self-confidence.
  • I was isolated. I could not carry on a conversation. Meeting with friends left me feeling left out since I could not participate in the exchange of news and ideas.
  • I couldn’t use the telephone. When my brother called from 2000 miles away, I couldn’t even say hello. How disappointing is that?

Writers often study body language as a means of making their words on the page more powerful. Well, being mute for three days, I had lots of time to practice body language! I got a stiff neck from all the nodding and head-shaking. My eyeballs rolled up and down so often they needed a massage. My mother told me it was impolite to point, but I pointed at everything, big, stabbing, forefinger pointing. How else could I tell my husband to feed the cat?

Surprises

I referenced surprises in the title of this post.

  1. Here is the first one. As a writer I’m familiar with the importance of body language in our fiction.   On the page, we use things like “pursed lips” or “clenched fists” or “narrowed eyes” to convey mood or emotion.    In real life, those cues are too small to make up for the lack of words. If no one is looking, pulling your lips into a prune shape accomplishes nothing but to create  facial lines.   Maggie Lawson talks about “amplifying” important moments in a novel.  She adds metaphor and cadence to amplify those pursed lips. i.e. “She pursed her lips so tightly I thought she might choke.”                                                                                                                                                 
  2. Voice is elusive. We are born able to make sound, even if it is just a wail. Every day of my life, I have had a voice — until I didn’t. In writing, the author’s “voice” is just as necessary and just as hard to define. It is that indefinable something that marks a passage as unique to that particular writer. Stephen Sondheim and Oscar Hammerstein II used the same notes of the scale, but the music – voice – they produced was entirely different. It is that distinction that marks an author’s voice.                                              
  3. Characters have voice. Here the possibilities for a writer are endless. We can speak of specific characteristics like a “gravelly voice” or a “breathless whisper” or “as shrill as nails on a chalkboard.” But once we have decided on a defining trait for our character’s voice, we need to stick to it.  Just as a baby can recognize his mother’s voice, we want our readers to recognize the voice of a character without having to use dialogue tags. What a protagonist says and how he says it, should identify him. If the hero and the villain sound the same, the story needs a rewrite.                                                                                                 
  4. Authors can use speech, or lack of it, to advance the plot. When I was mute, I was easily overlooked in group settings. Just like the servants in a Regency novel, I was invisible, discounted. If you write a story about a woman who struggles with self-confidence, make her silent in a crowd. She’ll have plenty of time to observe and won’t be seen as a threat to anyone. Think Miss Marple.                                                                                     
  5. Life experience is a marvellous teacher.  Until I lost my voice I’d never considered the implications of being mute. I expect life experiences used in fiction to be huge–earth-shattering, monumental –things like life and death and love. But small things have consequences. Those small things just might be the trigger to lift your writing to the next level.

Life is full of lessons. As authors we can use every experience to enhance our writing. We need to train ourselves to be aware and take note of all the moments, big or small, that make up our own backstory. That is the well from which we draw when creating compelling characters.

Please share in the comments any surprising discoveries from small events in your own life.

2 Lessons for the New Year

January 8, 2025 /

I hope everyone enjoyed a good break at Christmas. I know I did, although with the holiday falling on a Wednesday I was mixed up a good deal of the time about what day of the week we were on. It seemed I had two or three Sundays in every seven day stretch.

I got my Christmas wish with a pile of books under the tree — mystery, romance, literary and non-fiction. Love all the choices. I’ve finished Louise Penny’s latest mystery and am now reading a literary novel set in Ireland.

I also found time to listen to a webinar by Alessandra Torre on goal-setting and read an eye-opening article by Donald Maass on Writer Unboxed about taking your moral inventory. Moral inventory? What’s that? And what does it have to do with being a writer? As it turns out, according to the post, quite a lot.

Maass holds that there are two types of story-telling, the mirror and the arrow. The mirror reflects the culture, the arrow points the way to something else (better.) He offers a little quiz to help readers determine which category they fall into by determining their moral inventory, i.e. does the writer believe fate (mirror) determines our path, or does she believe in destiny (self-determination.) Try the quiz for yourself. It’s in the link I posted above. 

When I answered the questions and scored myself, I came down almost in the middle 5/7. That’s my usual fate when faced with a self-knowledge quiz of any sort. Still, I found it useful to consider that I fell slightly more on the arrow side of the equation. At one time I was a teacher and I guess I never got over it. I do want to tell readers what to do. 🙂 

Apart from the total score, I found my answers to the questions enlightening.  I chose faith over reason. I saw each day as opportunity rather than peril. If those are my deeply held convictions, then, if I write characters with the same mind-set, they are more likely to resonate with readers since they are “true” to my beliefs.

Now, I’m not about to sit down and write a story based only on my answers to the quiz, but if I keep in mind that my moral inventory leans toward arrow, it will give me a new way to look at plot points that get tangled up or characters who won’t behave. Are those characters arrows or mirrors?

And, getting back to Alessandra Torre’s webinar, do my readers want to read stories of arrows or mirrors? Which do I want my “brand” to reflect? Torre’s notes were very focussed on marketing and finding an audience. Her own experience shows that readers like an author to “stay in her lane.” That is, they want to know, when they pick up an Alice Valdal novel that it will be like the last one and the next one. 

The Louise Penny novel I just finished is her 19th in the series and the characters and setting are familiar to me. I look forward to spending time with those people in those places. I would be disappointed if Armand Gamache suddenly became a hippie, or Ruth Zardo played nice. The books are not boring, the suspense goes right through to the last page, but they are on brand and I can shell out my dollars knowing I’ll be happy with the book.

I’ve given up on New Year’s resolutions, but I’m happy to have two new lessons to apply to my writing career.

What about you? Any resolutions? Changes? Goals? 

 

Christmas Short Story

December 22, 2024 /

This year’s Christmas short story is titled, Christmas Lost and Found.

Below is an excerpt.

 

Mary Margaret Murphy slammed on the brakes and wrenched the steering wheel of her late grandmother’s prized 1924 Maxwell, then watched in horror as the big, touring car slid soundlessly into a deep snow drift.

“No! No! No!” she slammed her palm against the steering wheel, then pressed on the accelerator, hoping to ram her way through. She shifted into reverse, then forward, then reverse again, working the clutch, trying to rock the vehicle free, but she was hopelessly stuck. Snow fell, so thick and fast it obliterated her tire tracks within minutes. Soon it would be impossible to tell the difference between roadway and ditch. She covered her face with her hands, despair and frustration clouding out judgement. Judgement! She snorted in self-derision. If she’d exercised even a modicum of good judgement she would never have set forth on a two-day journey to a wilderness cabin to celebrate Christmas.

She’d made a foolish choice because she could not bear the thought of Christmas all alone. Tears stung her eyes and she let them fall. There was no one to see. She was tired of pretending she was all right. The truth was she missed her grandmother dreadfully. Her grief was made worse by the fact there was no one to share it – no sibling, no aunts and uncles, not even a shirt-tail cousin. As the last of the Murphy line in Canada, she was utterly alone. So, when Helen, her friend from the school, invited her to come for Christmas, Mary jumped at the chance.

“Bah, humbug,” she muttered and swiped the tears away. Grandma would not approve. . . . To read more, join my newsletter list using the box at right.

7 Priorities for Writers

December 4, 2024 /

Welcome to December and all the hustle, bustle and delight of the Christms season. In Canada our usual frenzy of shopping, wrapping and shipping has been upended by the strike at Canada Post. All the little tokens I had assembled to send to my faraway family, now sit in a box, waiting. The absolutely best Christmas present I ordered for my godson, sits in a post office 3000 miles away, waiting. The special baking I do for my brother sits in the freezer, waiting.

All that waiting is getting me down, especially as the two sides in the strike aren’t even talking to each other. Then again, Advent, is a season of waiting, so maybe I should take advantage of that “waiting” time to plan the rest of the month.

As I’ve written about before, I’m a great advocate for making lists. I make lists for the grocery store. I make lists for Christms presents and Christmas cards. I make lists for writing tasks. I even make lists for coffee with friends. Sadly, my list-making has fallen by the wayside as I’ve been overwhelmed by too many items to put on the lists. But today I read about an “Advent Jar” which seems a wonderful visual for setting priorities on my list.

The idea is to take a pint jar and fill it with sunflower seeds and seven walnuts.(The example at right uses rocks and sand but the principle is the same.) It won’t take more than one try to realize that if you put in the sunflower seeds first, there is no room for the walnuts. But, if you put in the walnuts — your top priorities–first, then the sunflower seeds can find space around them.

My desk already has too much clutter, so I’m not rushing out to find a pint jar and sunflower seeds, but I’m using that visual to think about my priorities and hone my lists into managable order.

  1. As a writer, one of the walnuts in my jar must be time at the keyboard. 
  2. Another walunt is my obligation to others. If I took on a task, I must show up and finish it. 
  3. Walnut three would be reading. I’ve just finished a large tome that my book club chose for discussion. It was not a work I enjoyed and it was very long. I set myself a goal of 40 pages a day in order to finish it in time. While I didn’t enjoy the story, the writing was beautiful. Reading the work of talented authors is like taking a writing class.
  4. Relationships. For writers, readers and everyone else, our relationships are central to life and writers need a life. It is important to prioritize time with the people who nurture our spirits.
  5. Giving. As much as we gain from relationships, we must also give to those relationships. Call a friend who is hurting. Have coffee with a colleague who struggles. At this time of year especially, take a gift to someone who is lonely.
  6. Social media. Not my favourite way to spend time, but posting regularly on social media will raise an author’s profile. If we want to sell books, we must engage on at least one social media platform.
  7. Write a blog.  My blog makes me adhere to a schedule, encourages me to research a number of topics and connects me to readers. Not all authors maintain a blog but I do, so I must make it one of my walnuts.

Now that the big items, walnuts, are in the jar, I can pour in the seeds of less importance. Things like tidying my desk, organizing research notes, doing laundry, buying groceries, playing with the cat, singing in the choir, caring for my health . . . All activities that bring me joy, and there is room to fit them around the big things.

Just like lists, life events will impact my priorities, but the idea of starting with the big ones first can reduce the sense of overwhelm that listing every single item that needs doing in a day may generate.

I’ve given you my seven “walnuts” but each of us is different. What are the important things in your jar of neverending tasks?

Agony in Amethyst

October 30, 2024 /

I’ve mentioned my friend, A.M. Stuart, on this blog before. She writes the Harriet Gordon series, set in early twentieth century Singapore. Well, she has just published the fifth and final installment, Agony in Amethyst. Perhaps she ran out of jewels. In any case, this tale tidies up a few loose ends left over from Terror in Topaz and brings Harriet and Curran to their HEA –finally!

If you want more background on Harriet and her times, go to A.M. Stuart books. You can see all the books in the series, watch a short video and get a free copy of the prequel The Umbrella, when you sign up for Ms Stuart’s newsletter.

In our splintered world, I often find myself railing against social media for spreading hatred and lies and fomenting anger. 

And yet, when I consider my long friendship with an author on the other side of the world — I don’t think one can get farther from my home in Canada, to hers in Australia — I laud the wonders of electronic communication which make that possible. 

Twenty years ago I picked her name off a registration list for an on-line course. The instructor wanted the students to pair up as a way of making us accountable. I decided to choose someone from far away. She picked me too and for the same reason. We’ve discovered so many commmonalities, apart from the obvious English language heritage. We’re both married. We both love cats. We both attend church. We share similar outlooks on the state of the world. We write and read historical fiction. We belong to romance writing groups.

We do have at least one difference. She is a much faster writer. When the pressure is on she can settle in front of her computer and churn out the words and storyline much, much faster than I can. I envy her on that front. To even things out a bit, I have a great neighbour and she has issues over the back fence. 😊

Over the course of our friendship we have endured a worldwide pandemic, seen a shift in world attitudes, watched our democracies come under threat, grieved at wars in Europe and the Middle East. We’ve seen the weakening of traditional publishing and the explosion of self-publishing in our industry. We’ve confronted the physical ailments associated with aging.  And we’ve seen our friendship grow and deepen — all through weekly letters. 

Through the power of words I’ve gained a friend oceans and continents away from me. Through the power of words we’ll keep on sharing our thoughts, our troubles and our triumphs. Through the power of words we have a friend to lean on.

Words have great power — good and evil. The maxim, “the pen is mightier than the sword,” still holds true. Like my friend and I, let us all use that power to learn and grow and understand the “other.” 

 

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