I went to the Romantic Times Convention.  And then I got sick.  Really sick.  And before I knew it, two weeks of my last month to finish a book were gone.  Just like that.  I got up Monday morning, turned around and looked, and…wow…I’d been robbed.  Of two whole weeks!  I thought about calling the cops.  But I couldn’t afford the distraction.  So I sat down to write.  And couldn’t.  I read what was already done.  It was good.  Too good for me to keep up with it.  To make each page better than the last.  How could I improve on the best I’d already given?  I was on chapter eight.  Not even enough for a novella, let alone a New York Times bestseller.  (Which is what I sat down to write.)

I kept my backside in the chair.  It’s what I do.  I even kept my fingers on the keyboard.  And typed.  Then I moved them to my mouse and clicked.  (Somehow a Freecell board had appeared on my screen.)  I won.  Game number 224.  In a row.  My win ratio is 100 percent.  I’m good.

Good enough to get this New York Times bestseller written?  In the time left to me?  While I was playing Freecell? 

The muscles in the back of my neck – which had been aching since I first got sick the week before – were so taut they felt like they might just snap.  I could feel hands pushing against my back.  Hard.  And there was a list of other things that needed to be done as well.  Promotional plans to implement.  Bills to pay.  Laundry to finish.  The gardens around the patio need to be weeded.  The house is for sale it has to be pristine.  But pages have to be written first.  I am not allowed out of the chair until they are done.

I looked at the blinking cursor.  Read the words Chapter Eight.  Again.  I knew what had to come next.  Sort of.  I knew the viewpoint.  The place.  I knew that a clue was going to appear.  I just didn’t know what clue.  It wasn’t appearing.  And all I wanted to do was run away.

Part of the problem was, such great stuff had happened in the first eight chapters of this book the rest was going to be anticlimactic.  Or so I told myself.  The book started out suspenseful.  Danger was imminent – and that’s supposed to happen at three quarters of the way done.  (Danger happens is how it usually appears in my synopses.  Usually in the second to last paragraph.)   But there are no rules in this writing world.  At least not that I know or follow.  So danger can happen in the first chapter.  It already had.  There was nothing I was going to do about that.  What I had to do was move forward.  Upward.  Onward.   What I wanted to do was run away.

I read some more.  And got the problem.  I had the wrong culprit.  Someone else did it.  Yes.  That was it.  I just had to get out of my own way.  Open my mind to the world of possibility.  A guy stepped forward.  Sort of.  I dragged him forward against his will.  He has Post Traumatic Stress Disease.  He’s a returned soldier.  He wants to run away, too.  I was going to make him my culprit.  But it was going to be messy.  The suspense would be a no brainer.  Piece of cake.  The story…not so much.  There was one slight problem.  My newly elected culprit wasn’t a bad guy.  I needed a bad guy. 

I went back to my original guilty party.  She couldn’t be a bad guy.  She wasn’t suspenseful enough.  And…she was a woman.  But she was all I had and with only two weeks to finish this puppy I had to take what I could get.  Except that I couldn’t.  Regardless of deadline.  Of stress and life and sickness.  I am a writer.  I cannot sell the work short.  I cannot settle.  So I sat.  And watched the cursor blink away the hours.  And I wanted to run away.

Instead, I called my editor.  Now here I am lucky.  So so lucky.  My editor was the recipient of a first editorial industry award.  Hands down.  Picked from authors who don’t even write for the house where she works.  She’s simply that good.  We’ve been together a long time.  It’s a union I trust implicitly.  She didn’t pick up.  I left a message.  I told her I was in trouble.  That it was probably just author insecurity rearing it’s unwelcome head, but that I would sure appreciate a phone call. 

She called back.  I rambled.  She listened.  And listened.  I talked about my doubts.  And then delved into the story.  Into the nitty gritty.  Discussing angles and details and reasons why my culprit just didn’t meet my standards.  Why she just wasn’t good enough.  Why she was anti-climatic.  I discussed her pros and cons and things that had occurred to me.  And when I paused, my editor calmly said, well I like what you said before.  I’d said a lot before.  I couldn’t even remember all that I’d said, I’d said so much.

She referred to one line.  It was a small thing.  A little detail.  Barely noticeable in the huge mass of information I’d imparted.  Thankfully I have a gifted editor.  And thankfully she shares her talent with me.  She’s got the instincts to know when something is right.  When it clicks.  When the story works.  I had my story.  It was all there.  Speaking to me.  I was just too busy listening to the New York Times to hear what my mind was trying to tell me.  I had my culprit.  She was the one.  I even knew why.  I just brushed off my answer as a little detail.  My editor took that little detail out of my mess and held it up.  She dressed it up.  And the entire book fell into place. 

Like water bursting through a dam, scenes burst forth, so quickly my mind and my words could hardly keep up with them.  One led to another in a progression so natural, so right, that I could hardly contain my excitement long enough to get off the phone.  I rushed in to my desk and grabbed my pen.  Copious notes flowed all over the page in little boxes in all directions.  I’d kind of meant to chart them.  They were coming at me too fast to be that particular.  The page isn’t pretty.  It’s scribbles and lines in different directions.  Names and…in the midst of the black ink there’s a phone number written in read.  In my urgency, I’d splashed all over an already used page.  No matter.  I wrote around the number for the florist I’d called to send a token to my mother for mother’s day until we’re home and can take her out for a proper celebration of all that she is to us.

And when the gush of water settled into a calming stream, I wasn’t quite so eager to run away.  I still had details to work out.  A plot issue that had to be dealt with, figured out, before I could actually begin Chapter Eight.  Tim called just as I was thinking about the fact that I had to tackle the issue.  I knew the road blocks.  Just didn’t know how to get around them yet.  But I knew enough.  I trusted the fact that he’d called at just that moment.  I told him I needed plotting help.  He agreed to help.  As soon as he was home, we put on our tennis shoes and went for a walk.  And as soon as we started off, he suggested we get to work.  I told him what I needed.  And within a block he had my answer.  It was a mule.  I’m picturing a donkey.  Or the bar at the corner just ahead of us.  It’s The Red Mule.  And we’ve spent some time there.  As a matter of fact, it was almost directly across the street from us and a stop in might be just the ticket.  Yes, maybe he was right. 

Meanwhile, Tim was still talking.  Something about a tarp.  I couldn’t work that in with a stop at the bar.  He was holding my hand and he’d passed the bar.  I’d passed it too.  And finally caught up with him.  What became clear was that I didn’t know what a mule was.  No problem.  He made that clear.  It’s a cross between a golf cart and a piece of farm machinery.  Sort of.  It’s a four runner with a little dump cart on the back.  And he was right.  It was exactly what I needed.  He also gave me the explanation for the weather issue that was plaguing me.  Which allowed me to stay in the state that I needed to be in.  We walked more.  Talked more.  So much for running away.  I couldn’t wait to get back to our office and get my hero home from Tennessee.  Now that I knew he could leave.

It’s Wednesday now and I’m diving in for the long haul.  Other than the most important familial obligations, there will be no breaks.  Bills, promotion, even laundry will have to wait.  And I’m good with that.  I love what I do.  I love that I’m allowed to spend my days doing what I love.  I love getting lost in the story.  Becoming the story. 

And when The End appears, when spell check is complete and the file is attached to the email to my editor, there is a place I can run to.  A place that I dream about anytime life gets tough.  The place that is sacred and magic and home all rolled into one.  It’s been in my life since long before I was conceived.  The site of every vacation I ever took as a kid.  The place where my very best friend and I spent long summer days lying on sleeping bags in the woods reading Harlequin romances.  And where we were super women, sliding down sand dunes and crossing six foot deep water by balancing on fallen longs.  We walked the wooded hills, and yes there are bear there, at dusk one night to retrieve a pony tail holder I’d left up there so that I didn’t get in trouble.  And we caught so many frogs we wiped out their population.  It’s the place that my mother had to turn over to my brother and I when my father suffered his final illness.   It’s the site of the first vacation I took with Tim.  It’s this, our cabin the woods, that I dream about.  It’s my beauty.  My peace.  My place outside the world of stress where everything really is idyllic.  And perfectly right.  It won’t be long now.  A matter of weeks.  And Tim and I will be up there again.  And my dreams will once again come true.