I got a message from facebook today that it was my friend Sue's birthday. Maybe I'd want to wish her many happy returns of the day? If only. The message, innocuous and obviously impersonal, left me bereft.
I'd never met Sue. Like so many of my writer 'friends', I knew her only online. She and I had been members of the same online writing community years ago. We got closer, writing wise at least, when we did a writing project together. It was Sue's idea--let's take a single premise, sketch out a couple of characters, and throw in a few odd facts and then retreat to our garrets. We'll each come up with a novella length story. Three of us took up her challenge. My take led to "The Whisper of Time" a novella-length story I never would have written but for Sue's bright idea. Sue wrote a horror story, Heway House, which was published after she developed it into a full length novel.   We'd kept in touch since then, each of us writing and publishing with small publishers.
There are quite a few people from what many of us now call 'the old place' that I would call online friends. They've often helped me along the way of my writing journey. Like real friends, they offer support for my work as I offer support for theirs. We've share some of our joys and sorrows over the years, too. But the truth is I don't really know them. They tell me, and others, only what they want known. I'm not being critical here, I do the same. Real, in deep personal stuff is often too raw to be shared online. I'm lucky to have a great group of real life friends and a very supportive husband for the deep dives. Online, you can never know the heights of someone's joy, or the depths of their personal despair.
​A few weeks ago, Sue took her own life.  I remember her, and will always remember her, as a kind and gentle spirit, always ready with an encouraging word, always willing to help out her fellow writers in any way she could. And, even though I never knew her, not truly, not really, she leaves an empty space behind--one of the candles that lights the way down my path has been extinguished.  I wish I'd known her better.  I wish I could have been a better friend, a real life friend. Maybe it would have changed nothing.  But I wish for it, none the less. 

At the very beginning of a story, when it's still just a seedling of an idea, I often think long and hard about place setting. Place and time are crucial elements to story--and they are often overlooked in favor of plot and character. Which isn't to say plot and character aren't important, they are essential. But where those characters walk around, where their story happens, is also crucial.
This is my very round about way of getting to the visit my husband Jim and I took this weekend to The Canterbury Shaker Village.
Tucked into a quiet corner of New Hampshire (only an hour from my house, as it turns out), is the kind of rolling farmland that makes my inner photographer say ah! Even in cloudy weather, it's a beautiful ride up a curvy road that leads to  a long stone fence and old buildings clustered together as a reminder of another time.
 There are, everywhere on this property, the  remnants of who lived here five or six generations back. You can nearly see the farmer standing behind his plow horses, nearly smell the apple pie baking in the ancient kitchen. 
Add to this a somewhat peculiar sect of Christianity, a communal people who wanted to live in simple way that honored their God in everything they did,  who vowed to remain celibate (in some cases dissolving their marriages to join), and you have what is commonly known in writer's circles as a plot bunny.  Well, not a plot bunny, exactly, but I can feel in my writer's bones that there's a story in there somewhere.

My writer's bones say story. My photography bones say great photo spot.

Here in the garret, there's always something in the works. Usually, it's a whole lot of somethings. On my messy desk this week is a chart of all the books and projects I hope  get written, finish revising,  and get out to you over the next few years.  There's a brand new tripod for my photography habit. Because I'm not mechanically inclined, it's taking me a while to figure out how to set it up.  There's my camera, ready to go. And my notebook, ready for the draft of the romantic comedy I'm currently working on.  The computer is open to a book called The Fall Line. It's the second in a series of three books I'm calling "The Wild Snow Series" because they all have a wintery ski theme. 
The Fall Line has a prolog. I like it really well, even though there's a huge argument in writer world about using them. The current consensus seems to be no--they should not be used and whatever needs to be said should be said within the story chapters. I don't normally use a prolog. In fact, of the fifteen or so books I've written or am working on, Fall Line is the only book that has one. It works as a way to set up the main character--and it lets me color outside the lines of the book's time line. 
I think, in this instance. It works.
I've shared the draft of this opening below. What do you think?
​

​My last big win is burned like the brightest of memories into my mind. I can still hear the music, the hard beat of the grunge I listened to before each race, blasting thought my earbuds as I went over the course in my head. I can still remember the course, one of a million sets of slalom gates I’ve run in my life. If asked, I could still pantomime the movements through those turns, though each gate, as I had on that day.
I can see coach Marv signaling me, am still jolted by the sudden silence as I shut off the music and stuff the buds in my gear bag, I can hear the snap as my boot meets and joins the binding, feel the snow under my skis as I skate over to the start house my limbs willing and anxious, the short wait already too long. There were cowbells ringing, they’d announced Tin’s finish time and I remember thinking not bad, probably enough to push her into third place and being happy for my best friend and best rival. I remember Tin’s crackly voice on the walkie talkie  as I waited for Elena  Marks, the Canadian star, to finish her run.
"Let it all out at the end, Ice. You got this." Tin said.
"You got this. Just smooth out, don't miss and you got this," Coach repeated.
 I took my place in the start gate and clicked my poles together three times for luck. My name was announced over the speaker and the count began-- ten, nine-- at zero, the start bar bumped my shin and I was off. The world a blur of white, nothing but snow and ice and speed, my skis an extension of my body, my breathing in tandem with each turn.
One turn and the next and the next, I let out fast and hard, the sun on my back, the gates coming at me as I chased them down and devoured them. By mid-course, I knew I could win. By the last gate, I knew I would win. A final skate, a push across the finish, my heart racing now as I turned to stop and pulled off my helmet in one continuous motion. My name flashed on top of the leader board. I was ahead by half a second.
Tin rushed toward me, nearly bowling me over. " Hot damn, girl! "    She hugged me and I felt tears sting my eyes.
They announced Katya Hofstadter, the only woman who could still have beaten me out for the world cup, though she'd have needed a phenomenal run to do it. "I can't watch," I said, only half kidding as I buried my head in Tin's shoulder.
I looked up as her mid-course time flashed on the board. Two hundredths of a second slower than me, it was going to be close. Katya skied into the finish, and the five seconds it took for her time to post on the leader board seemed like several eternities. Her name popped up under mine. Three hundredths of a second slower than me.  And just like that, it was done.  I had won my sixth world cup
Everyone gathered around me, hugging me, congratulating me. I was so high with winning I flew outside of my body, light as air, turning somersaults in the brilliant blue winter sky overhead. 
If I had known what the next year would bring, I would have hung on to the feeling; I would have kept hanging on to it for all I was worth.

It is, I suppose unfair to the Harvard Museum of Natural History a place for dead things. The same could be said of any natural history museum. Their function, after all, is to be a repository for artifacts, old bones, fossils, and the like.  The Harvard Museum is, by all accounts, an extraordinary repository. Housed in a large brick building just outside of Harvard yard,  the Museum is home to a huge collection of animal  specimens collected from all the corners of the earth. There is a special exhibit of flowers made entirely of glass; precisely and perfectly rendered, the craft of making and designing them boggles the mind. There are plenty of educational displays--a large exhibit on climate change, another that features the lives of insects, a third that uses fossils to illustrate the origins of life.  There is a display of rocks that would make any geologist swoon.
It was well worth the visit.  And yet...There is something in seeing mounted specimens that leaves me feeling  bereft. Which brings me back to the dead things theme of this blog.  The displays are comprehensive--growling tigers and bears, rhinoceros with long horns, a huge elephant. The monstrous bones of dinosaurs long gone from the world.  It is a fascinating display.  It is also static and inanimate. Right now, the critic inside my head (Zelda) is rolling her eyes and   saying "Of course they are inanimate. Can you imagine an actual Bengal Tiger on display under glass with five other large cats?"  I get it. Yes, of course they are. 
But after having photographed live animals, I realize the difference is more than simple animation. True, I've never come face to face with a grizzly bear--and quite honestly, I don't want to-- but there is a something in the real world of animals and plants that speaks deeply to me. Today I took a walk in my local park. It was a lovely, sunny spring day and like on most lovely sunny spring days, there were bunches of turtles sunning themselves on logs in a canal near a  pond.  I got as close as I could to a trio of them. Two, hearing me crunch over the forest floor, dove into the murky water. The third raised his head, acutely aware of me, probably acutely alarmed by me, too, he watched and waited. I could nearly see the throb of his pulse, his head frozen and still as he stared at me. I took his picture and left him behind. I'm guessing he was relieved to see me go.  The thing is, he was alive. And all around me, in the park, particularly at this time of year, there is life. Things budding, blooming, growing. You can feel the presence of life. It radiates outward and inward. It reflects the pulse of my own blood, my own life. 
All of this...this life...is missing from the specimens in the museum. It makes me feel sad, as though I am witness to demise, to something majestic that used to be but is no more.

Here are some photos of my museum trip--and today's turtle, too. 

There seems to be this  need, wired into certain human beings to challenge themselves. Marathoners run 26 miles, mountain climbers climb the highest peaks in the world. Sailors sail across oceans in boats not much bigger than canoes.  Hikers walk across continents. 
I've always admired their spirit, but I've never really thought myself one of their tribe. I am of the tribe of comfort, particularly as I get older. Sure, I  love going new places and discovering new things. But only to the point of enjoyment. Add pain and suffering to the mix, add adversity, and...well, not so much.
And yet. I am a writer. And we writers challenge ourselves regularly. It is a challenge to write a novel. Ask anyone who's attempted it. It takes time. It takes a certain amount of grittiness, too.  For me, somewhere in the middle, it becomes gruelling--the bright idea I had when I began doesn't shine so brightly anymore. In fact, it seems downright dumb or trite. The plot is out of hand, the characters have run amuck, and I've lost my way. I wonder if I will ever find my way again. At that point, I have to pull out all the fortitude I own, all the belief in my ability that I can possibly muster, and keep on keeping on.  If I do it and follow through, eventually the story starts to feel right again. I'm reaching home plate, the end zone, the finish line.  And crossing over to finish? Well, that's just about the best feeling in the world. I'm guessing that feeling is what motivates marathoners and mountain climbers alike. 
I recently finished another marathon of sorts. I signed on for the A-Z writing challenge--blogging every day  except Sunday for an entire month, with a different letter of the alphabet representing the theme of each day. On the first, when I started with A (for airplane) I was thinking of having my head examined for taking on the challenge at all. Yesterday, when I got to Z (for zoo) I was still thinking the same. I was tired. I was glad it was over. But I was also feeling pretty darn good about myself. I had met the challenge. I had crossed the finish line. 
For all of my fellow ISWGers who did the challenge this year, I offer up a virtual handshake and a great big cheer.  You've done it!!  Now go out there, and conquer that book you're working on. You can do that, too!