Along the Writer's Way

Harvest of Stories: An Anthology Celebrating Love and Community

This week I sent out a reminder that our anthology is on track with a dozen writers saying they want to contribute to a book centered around the theme of love. The love of an animal, nature, a landscape, a parent, a child, a lover, or even love of oneself, this universal theme offers a “harvest” in difficult times.

Working together as a community of writers is important. I look at the writers who in the past leaned on the shoulders of other writers to make their work known. From Virginia Woolf who hosted writers and intellectuals at Monk’s House, her cottage in Rodmell, Lewes, UK to Gertrude Stein opening her Paris salon to gatherings that included Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis and Ezra Pound, the vibe was one of collective creativity.

The support and spiritual power of a loose gathering of friends and colleagues encourages and nurtures self-discovery and knowledge which is the hard work of being truly alive.

Some people say that an anthology doesn’t sell. But that’s not the point. No one writer has to travel solo in this enterprise but leans on other writers in the community through readings and open mics, gatherings in friends’ and families’ homes. It is not the purpose of an anthology to make money—rather to collectively share and honor stories that matter.

It’s why fifteen years ago I started the Women’s Writing Circle. Throughout that time, I felt the love and the joy of the creative community. Women from diverse backgrounds came to the bookstores, the hotels, the churches, and the libraries where we gathered. As the world in which we live became even more troubled, I felt the need to keep going, even as I watched the most experienced person lose the presidential election because she was a woman and felt the grief that young women would no longer be guaranteed reproductive rights and freedoms due to misogyny and patriarchy furious that their dominion over women was threatened. This feminist approach influenced much of my writing.

On July 28, I attended the 50th anniversary of the ordination of Episcopal women priests at the Episcopal Cathedral in Philadelphia. One of the Philadelphia Eleven, The Rev. Dr. Carter Heyward gave the sermon, titled “Laborers in a Troubled Harvest.” She wrote this: “So we celebrate that event of 50 years ago – for giving us eleven audacious women, then four more women the next year, then a year later dozens, which became hundreds and now is thousands of women priests and bishops throughout the Anglican Church around the world – giving women an opportunity to participate fully in the liberation leadership of a renowned global communion. It was a momentous movement we Anglican women shared with other Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, and women of different spiritual and faith traditions around the world, women struggling to be recognized and celebrated as the religious leaders that women have always been, from the very beginning.

It’s important to remember that women priests, then and now, were standing on the shoulders of the Episcopal deaconesses first ordained in 1857 as well as religious orders of Anglican nuns that date back hundreds of years with their roots in Catholic monasticism. It’s important to see that we stand on the shoulders of those who’ve gone before.”

I am always optimistic that community is the “harvest” of all our endeavors as writers and as “shepherds” of our craft. Together, we nurture other writers to follow their conscience to write the stories that matter in difficult times. Social media as well as self-publishing have totally upended the book market. We can sell our books and we can publish with confidence that our voices matter. The “gatekeepers” that have been traditional publishing can’t keep us out. As writers and authors, we stand on each other’s shoulders, offering an anthology, a harvest of stories celebrating love and community.

The Summer of Love

The windows of the old Victorian house in Beach Haven open to sea breezes. The surf pounds like a heartbeat against the shore.

We sit on the floor in the darkened living room. Sagging sofas and chairs worn from endless summer rentals cast ghostly shadows in moonlight. My smooth and sun-burned skin makes me feel pretty, yet when he walks into the room, my confidence slides, and shyness returns. He has Jim Morrison’s long dark locks and good looks. “Listen to the moon, listen to the tide, hug me sadly ocean on our moonlight drive,” plays in my mind as I watch him light a joint.

“What’s your name?” he asks. “Mine’s Jim.”

I swallow. He even has the same name. “Suzie,” I say.

“Hey, Suze. Here…” he hands me the joint. It sizzles bright orange at the tip as I take a deep inhale. The lingering scent of coconut oil suntan lotion and the sweet fragrance of patchouli floats through the room.

I close my eyes and imagine, if I dare. It’s the summer of love —1970. We’re on the tail end of war, peace, civil rights, protests, and free love. I’m nineteen, about to turn twenty, the daughter of a school teacher and a housewife.

We talk about our summer jobs, me a waitress at an Italian restaurant on the bayside, him a bartender at the peach and pink motel on the ocean side. He says he’s from Virginia Beach. “You ever been?” Jim asks, taking another toke. I shake my head. “You should come down for a visit,” he says. He plans on law school after graduation, which makes him two years older than me. I tell him I want to be a writer. “Cool,” he says. “You writing anything now?” A novel, I say. (This when everyone wrote memoirs pretending they were novels.) I feel lightheaded and amazed. He’s spending time with me when there are prettier girls in the room.

Somebody puts on a record. The Guess Who. “American woman, stay away from me”… Jim asks if I want to “split” … walk on the beach. I nod and stand up. He takes my hand. He’s taller, much taller. I’m five-nine and taller than many men. I’m intoxicated and in love with this sexy stranger.

The sidewalk framed with roses and daylilies leads to the dunes. I reach down to take off my flip-flops and almost fall over in the sand, but he catches me. The New Jersey moonlight casts its corridor of glittering diamonds across the ocean, stretching out toward Spain. It’s low tide. Jim and I lie on the sand and gaze up at the stars. We take in the night, the sea, the surf and then he leans in and kisses me. “Hey, Suze,” he says.

Later, we walk to the water’s edge, cool summer surf rippling up to our ankles. We were never younger than we were then and never would be again.

***

I see him again after that, at a distance, holding the hand of another tall blond. “That’s his girlfriend,” my roommate tells me. “She’s up here visiting him.” I don’t know how she knows. I don’t ask. It’s the summer of love, after all.

I slip into my bathing suit. Towel, and paperback novel in hand, I walk the sidewalk to the dunes. A good book and the smell of saltwater are my companions. An elixir, a meditation to be savored.

I wade into the icy water and dive under and up again. Here comes another wave, what my father called the haircombers, rushing over my head. A ship sails toward the horizon. What exotic port or destination waits, I wonder, pondering the endless possibilities of the summer of love.

Our Women’s Writing Circle prompt this month was to write a summer memory. Do you have a summer memory that lingers?

Embarking on a New Anthology

What better way to pass the time than with a collection of short stories? We settle in with coffee or tea, sit back, and relax. Whether it is the intimate details of a writer’s life or her reflections set in beautiful prose, an anthology offers a colorful and intimate tapestry of voices and storytelling.

For the writer, an anthology means working with other writers to offer readers a book they can pick up, relish a story or two, and return to later.

Over the last several months, we thought…why not write and publish a new collection of short stories and poems? It seemed the time was right. An anthology might offer inspiration in challenging times, mingling with the community, and fostering connections. The theme is love. Love of family, lost love, love of nature, love of a landscape, love of each other and ourselves, love of a beloved animal.

We embark on a journey. A new Women’s Writing Circle anthology is in the works.

Over the years, I have participated in several anthologies. In one, I wrote about the loss of my husband, a soldier, a writer, a father, and my best friend. In another, I described our wedding dance as he held me close to “As Time Goes By.” In yet another, a first home in the suburbs of Philadelphia formed the centerpiece of new beginnings. I always come away from the experience of writing for an anthology having felt I contributed to a collective of voices. We shared stories that may touch the life of another.

These books often end up in the unlikeliest places…a kiosk of paperbacks in the local library, an assisted living community, a friend’s bookshelf, or even distant shores when we pack a suitcase and leave a copy of the book in our hotel.

When our Women’s Writing Circle published its first anthology, Slants of Light: Stories and Poems from the Women’s Writing Circle, we discovered the connections and community the project brought. We celebrated with roses and a write-up on Kirkus Reviews. In our second anthology, The Life Unexpected, partnered with another writing group, we coalesced a diverse collective of authors who shared a desire to see their work published and taken out into the public arena. (Unfortunately, that book is out of print.)

With our anthologies, we participated in open mics, signings, and talks at bookstores and libraries. We offered our books as gifts, sold them at church bazaars and author signings…, and sat down in cafes and living rooms with other writers and mulled the complicated and complex work that is writing.

We got to reflect on our lives and say, I am a published author.

Like all writing endeavors, collaboration is a creative grist. When we work with other writers who act as beta readers, gentle critics, and sisters in arms, we learn. We discover our writing style and appreciate the style of other writers. Most of all, we find the joy of writing.

Remembering Our Mothers

Oftentimes, when we write about our mothers, we write as if she is watching over our shoulders. We’re still that child waiting for her to walk in the room, never quite sure what she has to say or what’s up her sleeve that day. We are afraid to offend her, to write something unpleasant, critical, or unflattering of the woman we call mother.

By writing about my mother, I give writers the “permission” to write about their mother. This is what I’ve learned, I say. Whatever you write, the journey always ends with a greater appreciation for her. How is that possible? Writing doesn’t judge. It’s an exploration, an excavation. It offers permission to see her as fully human with all her strengths and weaknesses. Whether we write out of love, curiosity, anger, or even out of the need to heal and put the trauma behind us, the memories that surface lighten us, the fear disappears and we find the connection with her.

And so I wrote about my mother’s anxiety and depression, but also her gaiety. In my memoir Morning at Wellington Square, I remember the night my mother came home from a party, threw off her high heels, tossed her fur coat on the sofa, and danced around the living room like Isadora Duncan. As Joanna Russ notes in her iconic book How To Suppress Women’s Writing, women have historically been discouraged from writing stories of the everyday life of women as they are dull and of no literary value. And, of course, often too revealing and threatening, due to the social context they provide for posterity.

Although my mother rarely offered advice and when she did, it was “try marriage at least once” and “shave your legs on your wedding night,” she packed school lunches week in and week out for my brother and me. She planted zinnias and tomatoes, kneeling down in the brown earth, our cocker spaniel, Lucky, at her side. She cooked a mean rhubarb stew and succotash of sweet corn and lima beans. As evening approached, the cocktail hour was sacrosanct, her time to shed the depression and anxiety as she saw her possibilities dwindle — this after working as a babysitter, then as a clerk in the local gift shop, and, finally, at the John Wanamaker store in King of Prussia. In her fifties and without a college degree and no work experience (other than housewife and mother), this was all she could get. She liked that “little job” as she called it.

Gertrude, left, with her older sister, Edna.

I remember driving to the department store one afternoon. I see her smile, the lone saleswoman in the coat department, as she talks to another woman about trying on a winter coat. Does it fit well, how does it look the woman asks? Mother had become the department store couturier, the woman whose own figure was slim and stylish. She wore high heels and dresses just below the knee and earrings that glittered with rhinestones and pearls and her unpretentiousness might seem laughable to Hollywood’s depiction of the saleswomen of Rodeo Drive or depicted in Pretty Woman.

She thrived on socializing. This was an “outing” driving to King of Prussia, earning what she called “pin money” leaving behind, at least for a few hours a week, the loneliness, the dreariness of the house in suburbia where neighbors rarely came out from behind their cloistered greenery and gardens of cocktails and country clubs.

Boredom staked its claim along with depression in those days when my brother was long gone, off to pursue a career with his slim, blond wife and I had traveled to another state for college. Dad, her childhood boyfriend, had cheated on her by this time and the intricacies and web of staying together when a marriage was long past due haunted her but left her childlike, clueless as to how to live on her own, something she had never done in her entire life. She was still attractive in her fifties, with platinum hair, and had a brilliant smile and wide brown eyes. Those lessons — her lessons — served me well as I focused on reading and educating myself as a way to escape Gertrude’s fate.

And so I write about motherhood and remember…the mystique, the boredom, the sacrifice, the contract in perpetuity our mothers made so long ago.

A Time to Reset and Renew

As April comes to an end and May approaches, it’s a time to reset and renew. Writing can offer that renewal and reset, whether it’s a few words or sentences jotted down each day, or something more ambitious such as a short essay or the beginning of a poem.

Our writing practice is unique to us, and we can make of it what best suits us. I have been amazed at how writers I know use their writing practice to take on ambitious projects, such as revisiting long-dormant painful memories or writing something they have long wanted to write. They begin slowly, one word at a time, much like a beginner practicing yoga. They take small steps or longer stretches, balancing on one leg. Deep breathing is a way to relax, and writers can bring that to their practice by focusing on what inspires confidence and ease, knowing that what they say and write matters. Lighting a candle, playing music, and healing aromatic oils are all part of the practice.

Writing at our own pace can be important. Whether we prefer to write slowly or quickly, the authenticity of our writing practice is what brings satisfaction. It can offer healing for trauma, rest, peace of mind, and creative inspiration. We can do it in a group or practice it alone. The practice belongs to us.

That’s why I love facilitating our Women’s Writing Circle every month. It’s a time for wellness and revival, where we stretch ourselves to do what feels good, and if there’s pain, we stop and put it aside. We listen to each other’s writing, allowing it to evoke a sense of daydreaming and inspiration. Many times I leave the Circle with the energy to go home and just write, to flex my mind and body.

We take a deep breath as April ends and May begins, whether we pull out a worn journal filled with random scribblings or open a blank page on our laptops. Whatever it is, it’s all good. It’s a time to reset and renew.

Who Is Mary Magdalene?

I don’t claim to be a theologian, but like many others, I am on a journey to find the Divine. I follow my intuition, looking for signs … the red cardinal on the wire … the first burst of lilac in the spring.

Recently, I attended a retreat called “The Mystery of Magdalene,” led by Reverend Pat Cashman, an Episcopal priest. At the beginning of the retreat, she said, “We are all Mary Magdalene. What have you brought with you today that is Magdalene?”

What did she mean?

Outside the second-floor rectory window, the rooftop of a stately home is shrouded in April’s greenery of sweet spring. I remember the June day when we greeted our guests under the portico of that house, newly married, him in a cream-colored tux, me in a rather slinky white wedding gown. I remember our love for one another in a way I haven’t felt since then and never will again. Forty-five years have passed.

Now, I travel alone. People ask me why I am without a man, a partner, or a marriage. Why do you have no one with you? Who are you?

Who is Mary Magdalene?

Although she is a central figure in the New Testament, little is known about her life. The widow, the mother, the sister—the woman possessed by demons? They rewrote her story. They melted her down among the nameless women like a candle of wax. Was she a woman in love with a charismatic preacher? Or was she a wealthy woman who traveled the Galilee alone? Why wasn’t she attached to a man? Or was she a prostitute and sinner whose name tarnishes Irish history, forever haunted by the memories of Magdalene Laundries, those hellholes for “fallen women?”

She kneels at the cross, she is the first to witness the resurrection, and the one who anoints his feet with nard-scented hair. She was a teacher, a leader, a follower, a sinner, a prostitute, and perhaps the one who loved Jesus the most.

Some scholars believe that there was a special love between them and that their conversations were intimate and private, that they kissed on the mouth. Peter was even jealous of her. The rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar turned her into the woman who sings: “I don’t know how to love him.”

The role of women in the life and times of Jesus is complex and confusing. It seems to me that Jesus was a feminist, and it was the men who followed him who failed to relinquish their power and authority to the women he loved. I think of the women witnesses who promoted his ministry, whose lives are never the subject of sermons.

Then there is the woman author belittled because people believed that a woman could not have had conversations that the Twelve didn’t have with the man proclaiming to be the Son of God, let alone write her own gospel. Her leadership and authority are disputed by the men, an ancient message but one that resonates with women today. I think of women whose stories, whether or not they inspire anger or jealousy, dare to write them.

She was smart. She was slandered. She was Virginia Woolf. She was Adrienne Rich. She was the woman who dared write while the famous male authors said she couldn’t write, so why pretend?

When we eliminate guilt and shame, desire, and anger, we prepare to become “fully human,” according to the Gospel of Mary. This is the writer’s journey, the one that leads to redemption, the one that frees and heals.

To be “fully human” is to be divine. The “realm of God is among you,” she proclaims. This was heresy. This was revolutionary. This was the nameless women who gathered around the sacred Circle, lit the candle, and shut out the distractions of the outside world, putting their trust in each other. This is Magdalene.

How are you like Magdalene?

The Courage to Write and Remember

The Sonoran Desert and the Santa Catalina Mountains in Tucson, Arizona inspire me to keep creating and hopefully make a difference. I often write about the importance of getting away and stepping out of your comfort zone, especially for writers. My recent trip there allowed me to work on my novel and visit with friends I hadn’t seen in years. We shared perspectives and points of view and caught up on our lives. To be so trusting of one another after years apart was a gift, heightened by the great expanse of the American Southwest.

Daffodils in the snow, Torquay by Derek Harper is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

When I returned to Pennsylvania from Arizona, I learned that my best friend of over fifty years had died. It wasn’t this week or last that she died but in late January. Her distant family member hadn’t let me know of her passing, and for this, I remain deeply saddened. I was denied the opportunity to attend her funeral and was at a loss for how strange life comes to an end. Through technology and the internet, I found the obituary, which knowing she had an incurable disease, I admit I had searched for from time to time with great trepidation.

The obituary was sparse. She was a woman alone. Whoever wrote it knew little to nothing about Paula. Twice divorced, with no children, her parents long dead, there was no one to remember, to speak of her life, which was often difficult but far from lacking noteworthiness, including a journalism award she won for community reporting. There was me, her “sister” who remembered the day she first met the petite girl with big blue eyes who invited her into her house to listen to the Beatles, drink coke, and eat popcorn. She called me Susie and was present at every major milestone in my life. When our Women’s Writing Circle published its anthology, Slants of Light, she got each one of our authors to sign her copy. But Alzheimer’s had stripped her of her memory and her gentle nature. I lacked the courage to make the two-hour drive to New Jersey to visit her in the nursing home in her final years. I couldn’t bear becoming invisible to her and seeing her so distressed, caught between anger and weeping. The last time I visited, when she still knew me, she said hauntingly, “Don’t forget me.”

I am not proud that I never went back after that, yet when I mentioned this to a friend, she validated her own experience of avoiding any final visits with her cousin who also had Alzheimer’s.

With Paula at our *Slants of Light* book signing

As writers, we seek to make sense of the world around us, not just by drawing upon our own experiences, but by learning from the experiences of others willing to share their stories and moments of pain and suffering. My friends in Arizona and friends here…they help me realize I am not alone in this beautiful and terrible journey. To quote Kate Bowler, whose Lenten study I recently completed, friends and community strengthen us. However, where do we go from here? How do we find the courage to face the most beautiful and terrible things?

I looked out the window this morning. I may have an answer. The luminescent lawn of green nurtured by rain and clouds offers April’s mystery. So do the fragile white and yellow daffodils that grow among the weeds behind tree limbs, fallen during winter storms. As the cycle begins again, it is April that strikes a chord.

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain

– T.S. Eliot, “The Wasteland”

The reminder that I will never see my best friend again is poignant and bittersweet. As winter fades into spring, life goes on. It’s easy to be hard on ourselves when things don’t go as planned. That’s why it’s important to be kind to ourselves and focus on progress rather than perfection. Writing can be a powerful tool to cultivate self-compassion. By allowing our uncensored thoughts and feelings to flow onto the page, we can explore and process our grief and loss. This April, I am inspired by the memory of Paula, my beautiful best friend, to keep writing and reflecting on the great love and gratitude we shared during our time together.

The Pilgrimage of Writing Out West

As writers, we get out of our comfort zones and find “the next chapter.” Or, at least, that’s what I hoped when I traveled 2,500 miles to Tucson, Arizona, from my home in suburban Philadelphia last week.

This place of magic and mystique speaks to my creative soul, much, I suppose, like New Mexico drew Georgia O’Keeffe. I lived in Tucson for a year in 2008 when I worked as a volunteer in the nonprofit sector and came back many winters, but I hadn’t returned in six years until now.

Last March, I made a pilgrimage to Israel with the Episcopal Church. This winter, I wanted a “less heavy lift” yet a getaway that nurtured me so I could work on my novel.

I figured that coming back to Tucson was circular, like a pilgrimage back to the beginning of a time and place that I remember as happy.

Whether domestic or international, pilgrimages offer an inherent element of spirituality, a soul-nurturing. We discover who we are, not just as writers but as women looking back at the past and where we might go from here.

Serendipitously, my trip coincided with the Tucson Festival of Books. I volunteered at the first festival in 2009, came back years later, and here I was, again, only now an author of four books and two anthologies. The festival brings authors and writers from all over the country together, kindred spirits on the University of Arizona campus.

There’s this thing about being a writer. Being around other writers and sharing ideas, experiences, and creative juices is a coming home, a tribe of kindred spirits.

The idea that writing every day is required if you’re serious about your craft is one of many myths. While some authors mentioned goals of at least 500 new words a day, another said that due to her chronic health condition, she wrote only when she could muster the energy. Yet another works a nine-hour day four months out of the year. The rest of the year is devoted to teaching.

As for me, life often intervenes, steering me from the disciplined intention of working every day. A new writing project like this novel energizes me, as does my writing group back in Pennsylvania, the Women’s Writing Circle. There is one thing all the authors agreed on. A writing partner, a critique group, and editors are essential tools of the trade.

The internet has made the writer’s job infinitely easier. Researching a character…for example, in my novel, a woman has a personality disorder…is as easy as Googling the condition. What does it feel like to be “neurodivergent?” How does a character with a personality disorder express herself?

One writer who had been adopted and learned at the age of sixteen the identity of her birth mother said she wrote her story as fiction, not non-fiction “because I don’t know enough to write it as non-fiction.”

That resonates for me, too. I write what I know, often from my own life experiences. I write fictional characters that resemble people I know or once knew, but the character takes on his or her own life thanks to the alchemy of imagination.

As a fiction writer, I attended sessions on writing with plot and suspense in mind. If you don’t care about your characters, your readers won’t either. Developing dialogue that is “cagey” was an interesting piece of advice from one author…it is not what they say as much as what the reader infers as their meaning or motivation.

End each chapter with something akin to a cliffhanger or a question that makes for pageturners, a hint of something to come, or the revelation of a secret.

Create conflict between your characters. As one writer said: “Make your characters want something and then put obstacles in their way. That’s plot.”

It’s good to be out West, writing. It’s a good feeling to come away inspired to do the hard work simply because other writers validate all your experiences. The “communion” with the first cup of coffee in the morning. The endless drafts. I often wonder where I would have been in my life if it weren’t for writing. What I do know is that writing has been good for me. It’s a pilgrimage to a holy place of creativity, discovery, and learning. And I’m not done yet. More pilgrimages await along the writer’s way.

Winter’s Gospel of Comfort and Time

This weekend, I attended the celebration service for Absalom Jones, the first African American Episcopal priest ordained in Philadelphia in 1802. As the choral group of young girls and boys sang in the high-ceiling cathedral with windows showcasing snow-draped fields, I remarked to my friend, “I can’t believe I was ever that young. They have their whole lives in front of them. Everything awaits with endless possibilities.”

I told my friend. “I wish I were young again. I would love to do it all over…” meaning my life. My friend said, “I would too if I knew then what I know now.” That, of course, would be ideal.

In college, I dated a man who played the piano for a gospel group from a Washington DC church. Since then, I have loved the rhythm and vibrancy of survival expressed through gospel music. We were the only white people traveling with five or six black men to North Carolina and Virginia, where they played at churches. The hallelujahs and amens were an education for the Protestant girl who worshipped in old stone churches with ornate stained glass windows of Jesus holding a lamb. After invigorating services, we enjoyed feasts of barbecued chicken and corn. We stood and talked next to tables laden with bowls of potato salad and plates of apple pie. I see a girl with shoulder-length blond hair, wearing light blue bell bottoms and a colorful dashiki-type blouse. I see him… a man, a gifted musician I loved who turned out to be gay and taught me the heartbreak of first love.

So much is written about age and the passage of time’s imprint on mind and body. I struggle to avoid the advertising and media trap of the depressing. Old ladies staring wistfully out the window…old men in rocking chairs. Slights from people I thought were friends once bothered me, yet now belong to the prism of time that this too shall pass and patience is a virtue.

The snow that blanketed my backyard this week merged in perfect winter harmony with the sunshine and blue sky that followed the storm. My Valentine’s Day passed quietly. The next day, I bought peach-colored roses at the grocery store on sale at 50 percent off. They are just for me, a gift for loving myself.

I am “babysitting” my sons’ dogs for the next two weeks. They say you should feel useful to stay young. Caring for animals is useful. My sons have traveled to the end of the world—Antarctica—a trip they planned for thirteen months, which required a sizeable investment of time and money. They invited me to go, although we all knew I preferred the “health” that comes with a good night’s sleep, not the grind of 27 hours to get to Argentina…and whales, yes, I’ve seen those before.

I am leaving for Arizona after they return. This Is Me Now… a woman accepting the ideal getaway…leisurely and familiar yet magical. The sunsets and desert become muses for a work-in-progress novel.

As the young people at the Absalom service, called “Hope is Here”, sang gospel hymns of praise, I thought of a cozy house, a dinner of my choosing … and three dogs … mine and my sons’ … awaiting. This is the loneliness and beauty now.

Winter is a time for comfort. As the great painter Andrew Wyeth once said: “I prefer winter and fall when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.”

There is a quietness now that comes with understanding the complexities of life. Absalom Jones fought against all odds the injustice of slavery to become a spiritual beacon of light. I see the complexities of my life, too. From that first gospel concert with the boyfriend from DC to the one on a winter’s day decades later, it’s all unfolding to the rhythm of comfort and time.

A Novel About Obsession

Earlier this month, I wrote on Facebook that I had started work on my new novel. It’s a bit of a departure for me as it tackles the topic of obsession and has a true-crime aura, albeit fiction. I received a lot of congratulations and interest, and so I’m writing again every day.

Yesterday, when I mentioned this project to a friend, she was intrigued. “Oh, I love it,” she said. She asked me to give her more details. It’s about a woman stalking a man, harassing him, I said. What motivates her to try and ruin this man and have so little faith in herself that her entire identity is wrapped up in a relationship gone wrong, especially when she is an accomplished and educated woman?

She went on to tell me that when she was in her twenties, she had dated a man for three years. When he broke up with her, she began stalking him. When she looks back on that time in her life, she realizes that it was not just her anger at being rejected but her attempt to reestablish the relationship. It was wrong, she said.

Maybe the past is why she told me she enjoys watching “crazy women” on YouTube. “I’ll send you links to some of the videos,” she offered. When I got home, the links, half a dozen were there. In one of them, a woman screams and pounds on her ex-boyfriend’s door, begging him to talk to her. Begging over and over. When he refuses and tells her to go away, she tries to smash his window glass with a patio chair. He’s afraid of calling the police because he thinks they will side with her. After she punched him in the face, he knocked her to the ground. Meanwhile, he records it all on his cellphone.

Dark obsession is something Stephen King had written about years ago in his novel Misery. And we all remember the movie Fatal Attraction with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas. But I have to wonder: Did things get worse after the MeToo Movement?

Writers explore topics that interest them. Being a lifelong feminist, I always felt that the egregious behavior of men who could sexually assault and abuse women without repercussion needed to be rectified. But when angry women feel victimized and suspect they can weaponize law enforcement and the judicial system to their advantage with false allegations of abuse and assault, then how much progress have we made?

What motivates a person to seek revenge? What sparks their obsession? Why do some people not accept the consequences of their decision to enter into a relationship that is unhealthy but then stay with it?

I think so much of what we’re living now is a study of anger, polarization, and the feeling that others are to blame for whatever is lacking in our own lives. How do we deal with this? Who is to blame? How does it end?

I became the target of obsession when I first became engaged to my husband, something I wrote about in my memoir Again in a Heartbeat. His mother, in a fury, came after me with a knife and stabbed me through the hand. Was it her fear of a loss of control … of losing her son to another woman? If she had been on medication, would she have been a different person?

Craziness and anger are rampant these days. Have people lost all ground, all belief in themselves? Do they feel their lives are over and destruction is the answer? Writing is a journey. This novel offers an exploration of the human heart. And so I write.

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