Sunshine—frost—grass will grow by leaps and bounds after yesterday’s rain. Suppose I should be mowing it today. Washing windows, all the domestic stuff I would be doing before I got this horrible incurable disease.
What disease you may ask, the one from this lethal bug bite, I say and cringing as I do. The one that has robbed me of my peace and solitude. That bug that has filled my world with characters, and I might add, some very unsavory. They hog my dreams, they badger me relentlessly. In the end, they make me doubt by my worth, or at the very least, my sanity.
The struggle to survive continues as the disease spreads. First it was letters to the editor, then poetry, short articles, book reviews and now full blown it sits on my shoulders with all the weight of Zeus and his warriors. A novella, a novel, an epic novel, a chapbook of poetry, reviews, interviews, radio and more!
Struggling to get out from under to still my pen, quiet my soul—while pounding the pavement, the super internet highway, contests, mailings, begging to be heard. Buy my books and-- when they don’t, can’t I quit? Will the disease die? Nay! I am forever cursed as if by the Writer’s muse herself.
Chimera in Yellow or delusions in purple. There is no color and yet, there is all color. The struggle is in vain, but the hope will not die. Hope has no boundaries and so I write. Day, after day, after day—anticipating my big breakout novel. Can it be far away, can it be around the next corner, the next page, the next submission – and if it is, will it break this spell, this curse—this abomination? OR, will I write with more fervor and angst?
Is it ever enough to be published…just that and nothing more? I hang suspended from my own rope, knotted by my choice of careers – but did I really choose it or did it choose me?
“You’ll never get a garden to grow in this rock pile,” he said as he plowed my space. And a garden flourished that year with bountiful harvest against all odds. And he, the farmer, was amazed, not I.
I choose the impossible and never hear the warnings, the nay sayers; forging ahead to do what I didn’t know couldn’t be done. So my garden of prose continues to be seeded in this rocky soil and I know it could be a beautiful harvest very soon.
Billie A Williams
www.billiewilliams.com
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