May 30, 2022

 In honor of the men and women who gave their lives to protect our great country:

Keep Saying Their Names

Taps

The Written Word

 I started this blog post in December of 2020, the 17th to be precise. In January of that year, regular blogging by participants was suspended, not because of the soon to be worldwide pandemic, but a general ennui we had all, in varying degrees, felt at the time. 

Why the title, The Written Word, I don't recall, but I do know that I had not written or published anything of significance since September of 2018. In January of that year, my husband and I went house-hunting in Billings, Montana. His chamber orchestra arrangement for the Welsh opera Blodwen had been taken up by Rimrock Opera to be performed in May of the following year. He had also been offered the position of Musician in Residence (MIR) at NOVA Center for Performing Arts in the same city. 

Before this post becomes an advisement for my husband, let me say that Montana had been a location in one of the books that I was writing over a period of time and my interest in the "Last Best Place" had not been diminished by the decades that had passed since I first experienced the "big sky country" as a teenager eager to meet my penpal living in Bozeman.

On our final* day of house-hunting, we found the perfect house for us: a tri-level built in the 1960s with character and features we loved. We had to be out of our San Francisco apartment by midnight, February 28th and therefore move into our house on the 1st of March, exactly 28 days from the day our bid on the house was accepted - the *day we were leaving Montana.

All details fell into place and the cab that took us to the airport arrived on time. We even managed to drop our keys to the apartment in the box before midnight on the 28th. Only one item was left behind: an oblong stained glass window we had acquired somehow and parked behind a closet door. We slept at the airport and arrived in Billings on the morning of March 1st, signed all the title papers and moved into our home with no furniture but the blow-up double bed we had checked as luggage.

Writing from that point became a matter of stolen minutes. Between my husband's work as MIR at NOVA and the premiere American performance of Blodwen, I sang in the Blodwen chorus as the only Welsh-speaker and was the Assistant Director,  as well as continuing my "day job" as Administrator working remotely and two gardens to tend, there was little time or energy left for completing a novel. The best I could do was prepare a 2nd edition of Pavane for Miss Marcher, the first novel in my "In Maine" series which began with "Nights Before: The Novel" - a compilation of six novellas. 

I am still in Montana, still tending two gardens, still working a "day job," still involved with any work I can do for NOVA and my MIR. But, writing? Very little such luck. Steven Pressfield, in his book, The War of Art, has labelled this behavior as resistance. I don't disagree with that assessment. My excuse is "finding time." 

For writing, the cure is "make time." 

I think about the book I am writing, plot the next scene, read what I wrote the last time I "made time" and still have not moved ahead with the two books I originally scheduled for publication in 2020, then 2021 and now, 2022. I have written blog posts about procrastination - I am an expert! 

This is my promise to myself: I will publish That Kentucky Boy - a sequel to Pavane for Miss Marcher - and Dance by the Light of the Moon - in the "American in Love" series which includes Wait a Lonely Lifetime and This Can't Be Love - before the end of 2022. 

I don't need luck, I need perseverance. But wish me luck in any case!

With gratitude to all my fellow contributors to Classic and Cozy Books

Leigh Verrill-Rhys, Novelist