Happy Mother’s Day, Authors

Happy Mother’s Day, Authors

All writers are mothers. Our story germinates in the womb of our imaginations. It starts as a tug and a pull of invisible words and actions and visions that tear us away from what we should be doing and turn us inward. The premise sucks from our life stream to grow and grow until it forces us to sit still and allow it to be born into the world—a splash of black words across the white sheet. With spasms of hope we bring forth our babe, small and pitiful, a mere twinkle of what it will become and watch it dance along our nerve pathways from fingertip to eye to ear until, like a pesky toddler, it drains away our energy.

Now it is time to train the rough draft of it into its rightful form so that others can admire the resemblance—how it takes after its mother. So we gild and trim and dress it up or down, recreating, recasting, resurrecting until it walks strong on its own and our mind is blank. And we send it forth, still damp behind the ears, to be mulled over and carved by the bullies and the saints.

And if we have done our job well, the story will survive and take on a life of its own so that years later when we pick it up and stare at it, we ask: Who wrote this? And then we clasp it to our breast and claim our child.

Enjoy your day, mothers all.

Reposted from May 12th, 2012