End of the story . . .

I can't believe I've left the blog idle for two weeks. My excuse? The house repair/remodel is just about overwhelming.

I also can't believe we're less than a month away from autumn, not that the weather here in Mobile is any indicator. It's been raining and in the high 90s for two weeks now, and everything is green . . . including the first three bricks high on my house. Sigh.

Now, the conclusion (thus far) of my writing life:

After I moved to Mobile, AL, my desire to write bubbled to the surface. Retirement, it seemed, was not simply the start of a new chapter in my life, rather it is where a yet unwritten book began. A class in creative writing at the University of South Alabama sent me on my way.

I write because I like the rhythm, the music of the words. I write because I like my characters--they are not complete fabrications. I know them personally--or at least some part of them. I see them in my mind's eye. I watch them walk. I see their gestures as they speak, hear the tone and timbre of their voices, understand their meaning. All of this visualization is a result of the screenwriting course. Though I have to admit there are scenes that tell my own story . . . I'm the one who has been there, done that, said that.

Sometimes the words flow across the page like the broad strokes of a house painter's brush. Sometimes each page comes to life slowly, as if it were a rendering of a copse of Alabama's long needle pine trees being completed by single strokes of a pen and ink artist.

When I write, I turn on the television to the Weather Channel. I need a voice other than the one in my head to keep me tethered to the real world that I abandon to create my own version of some protagonist's reality.

And when dark and stormy nights keep me awake, it is only the strobe of a lightning bolt followed by thundering applause that keeps me in bed, lest I plug in my computer and risk again its electrical annihilation as I wend my way through the night hours on a flight of fiction. On those clichéd nights, the pen and notepad on my bedside table are generic substitutes for electronic keys because I cannot wait to write--the morning is too far away.
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That's it for now, but I'll keep on keeping and hope you do the same.

cj

The Jeff Johnston photo is called "End of the Road." 'Nuff said.