Was it early onset Alzheimer's or ADD that was preventing the writer from sitting down to write once or twice a day? The lovely words, the brilliant images, the fluid descriptions came to her before she slept at night, as she slowly woke up in the morning, and in snipets throughout the day, as she viewed an interesting outfit a coffee drinker was wearing, as she walked the dog or watched an incredible sun set in the sky with billowing clouds and far reaching rays of sunlight?
The distractions were many, from the phone calls, texts, blog posts, email and Facebook notifications from her many siblings, coworkers and friends. Dirty laundry was always present, and the messy family required picking up after and a kitchen to clean. Regarding the somewhat healthy food they consumed, she made the list, did the shopping, the grocery unloading and cooking, and of course the table setting, serving and clean up afterwards. The dog and cats needed attention, from feeding, litter box cleaning and dog walking, to picking up food from the feed store, vet visits and vacuuming and dusting pet hair. Reading, eating, playing solitaire and drinking alcohol were all distractions.
It seemed all she could do was create lists to check off.
She needed to create a plan for her story. While she had characters and a few ideas about storylines, it wasn't coming together. She was distressed. Not just from the lack of writing, but because of the distractions, and the lack of focus.
She had two story ideas. One, the first, was to be a collection of short stories about a psychologist in a little suburb town that heard the most outrageous accounts from her clients, but had to keep them to herself because of the nature of her business. A woman that toured homes for sale to raid the medicine cabinets of prescription drugs, the guy who killed his wife, chopped her up and stored her body in pieces in the backyard, a dysfunctional married couple that knew two murderers firsthand, a woman stuck in the 80's refusing to go online and other quirks including clothing and hair, a bad pastor, a hoarder and one more ... maybe a teenage cutter that didn't want to talk? A pot smoking teenager that was caught by his mom but had a much bigger secret?
The second story is one that was laid on her heart after reading the fictional story of Dinah, Leah and Jacob's daughter in the Old Testament, named The Red Tent. This particular story would be written around Keren Heppuch, the youngest daughter of Job, and a present day character (PDC).
Keren Heppuch she could visualize - licorice colored hair and eyes to match, a rebel raised in a wealthy household. But PDC would not come out of the closet. She remained silent. The KH story seemed to be the one calling her, and she told many about the idea, but she just couldn't come up with a compelling story line that would capture readers and editors alike. The only premise she could develop was that the PDC was raised in an opposite household, with little money and inattentive parents, yet she "met" Keren Heppuch while reading the story of Job, and had a curiosity about her. Maybe she goes on to research her? Maybe she becomes a bibliologist, or person that studies the bible and biblical artifacts, after receiving her degree and a pastoral certificate? The only problem is that Job is a very mysterious book of the bible. No date is associated with it, so it could have been written during the time of Moses (years), Issac, Jacob or Solomon.
After writing for an hour, longer than she expected, but it was after midnight and she had a quiet house, she felt inspired to begin the short story book, where she would have many beginnings, middles and ends, which felt more accomplishable. She would start tomorrow.
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