I Made a Desk, Now What?

"I made a desk

Or rather

A desk made me.

While toying

Tossing

Wrestling ideas

Wrangling plots

Characters

Motives

Swirling the story

Letting it

Present

New patterns

Pieces,

And possibilities

The mundane

Instructions

Emptied me

Out.

Step by step

I trickled aside

And let

The story

Fall

In to place.

I made a desk

Or rather

A desk made me." ~ Olivia J. Herrell

My New Sauder Desk

Thank you, Charlotte Levine Gruber*. Thank you for reading Blessed Are the Peace Makers to the end, all ninety-nine thousand, seven hundred and forty eight words. You are my hero.

Thank you for liking the story, characters, flow.

You were kind. And excited. And honest. As my first beta reader, you rocked it.

Thank you.

As a result of your much-needed input I have a prologue to absorb, characters to assimilate, others to flesh out, conflicts to stir, gaps to fill, future-tones to invoke, lines to draw, motives to manage.

Time for rewrite.

Pausing to let the “aha” break over me, I laugh just a little. I now understand first-hand the importance of a second reader. Someone not the author. What was clear to me as I wrote, wasn’t so crystal to my reader. Huh. Imagine that.

Thank you Charlotte*.

Revised scenarios play in my head and after back-aching hours, I have a desk, complete with drawer and two cubbys.

Today I made a desk, and in the doing, the desk made me.

~ Olivia J. Herrell

P.S. In case you were curious, I did unplug on vacation to a limited extent, leaving the laptop at home and using the iPhone sparingly. Considering AT&T is my carrier and we tromped around Oregon, that wasn't difficult.

* Charlotte Levine Gruber is the author of CODE OF SILENCE. Click here to read more.

The Yellow Wood

A thread of anxiety wound itself through my day today, twenty-eight days and counting...

It stirred up a bad case of shuffling-paperitis, which prevented me from finishing a thing. I did find out the going rate for shipping books. But box size, hell. I need visuals, or dimensions, and they're giving me a number: 108" combined length and distance at the widest point. Whaaat? I'm pretty mechanical but this one, hmmm. I still don't know how big a box I can use.

I managed to get a few small things done, then settled down to billing, mostly data entry. That simple task brought much-needed calm as productivity distracted the beast for a while.

Wednesday is my BNI meeting morning, which means I'm up, by alarm, at 5:00. I've been a member for 9 years, and once a week, for four of them, I've had breakfast with these particular guys. Like my patients, they are my California family. So, this morning, at 7:00 a.m., I said goodbye.

It occurs to me that some may look at my life and see it as a series of leavings, of goodbyes. I am keenly aware of every goodbye.

But what about the arrivals? When I leave, don't I always arrive at my next destination? Yes! Adventure requires a journey, and a journey, a beginning and an end. Seekers travel miles. Over years. For lifetimes.

I recently shared one ending with you, the end of my seeking. I expect to be sharing another one soon. So, stick around...

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."*

Thank you to all my fellow travelers, poets one and all.

*excerpt from: The Road Less Taken ~ Robert Frost