Going Forward

I am ever-grateful for my writing group, the women I have worked with for all these years.  As much as Asha's story brings them to the edge of emotion (which I have seen and they have told me), they can take it.  It takes some strength to read about her.  This is a real thing, a real woman who died with her child.  It is a sad story, it is a violent story, and one which has an undertone that there are some people you can be familiar with who wear a mask of normalcy and have a malignant abyss beneath.

I have a feeling my old Saturday writing group, comprised of younger people and one person who thinks he's a young person though he's old, could not handle the subject matter of my book when I told them about it  (except for the young man there), a real murder.  They write about battles with elves wielding pickaxes, vampires attacking and killing people in bloody, horrible ways, women getting attacked by horrible creatures, etc....but give them the real thing and that's it, I guess.  I'm done with trying to go back.  My women friends can handle it.  There is only working forward, and forward.  One of my dear friends from my MFA program is going to critique what I have, too.

Encouragement means everything to me right now.  I have a five year old in my care who has no siblings, and who has been lavished with toys (mea culpa) which litter the floor and which I must clean.  I saw a website for a "squalor support group" recently, with before and after pictures, and it really inspired me, plus helped me admire people's courage in showing before and after pictures.  I mean, this was mold, filth, homes that hadn't been cleaned at all in years, people that could not sleep in their beds because they were piled with trash bags and moldy clothes, people who could not find or use the bathtub because it was filled with garbage (one woman washed with baby wipes), nor cook on the stove because it was piled with trash.  Many of them said, "I hate myself" and I wanted to cry, especially as they had cleaned their houses, finally, in amazing ways despite serious depression and isolation; some people were shut-ins with agoraphobia yet found the courage to get outside and put things in the trash, or order trash service for the first time in years.  Some had few resources and yet made their homes look very nice. I don't live like that, but sometimes my housework is endless (so it doesn't get that way, I guess).  I do keep this blog, which is the way I clear my head before writing my book.

So much puts a wall between people and their writing or other work.  So be it, but I can find an hour a day to work.  I have written like this all my adult life, even when I was in my MFA program, and am glad my lecturer job is out the window.  As much as I loved my students, the mountains of paper and the fact that I had no idea what to say when I corrected them or what grades to really give, made me not so sad to give it up. 

Anyways, time to work with Thistle to get all her projects off the floor, and then laundry and vacuuming, and hopefully then it is time to get back to my real work.