Now I See

I blame the fucking lawyers – they’re the reason I ended up in rehab.

I’ve always loved that statement and there has been ample time for my love to blossom. I wrote it years ago as the opening line of a memoir conceived in the mind of a woman claiming to be a writer, even though I rarely wrote anything more creative than a grocery list.

I had no burning desire to put any words on paper because I never thought like a writer. At my first two class reunions, my inability to come up with a plot didn’t stop me from telling my former classmates I was working on a book. I skipped my thirty-year reunion rather than show up without a published manuscript, thereby missing out on a story involving a slut, a swinger’s ranch, and big old titties being rubbed on the hood of a Corvette. If that chain of events had only happened during my ten-year reunion, I might have completed my sixth book tour by now.

My mother sparked my interest in the idea of becoming a writer. She wrote a charming children’s book about our two cats, but could never get it published. Mom never gave up on anything and as each rejection letter arrived in the mail, she’d promptly submit her book to another publisher. My chances of ever making the bestseller lists were slim because I inherited my father’s big nose, the cleft in his chin and a tendency to immediately quit rather than make any attempt to realize his dreams.

Writing books sounded like a fine idea to me at the age of ten, but I never put forth a bit of effort until high school. At that time, I imagined I had invented teen angst and scribbled in spiral-bound notebooks countless dreary poems chronicling an unremarkable life. I fancied myself a modern- day Poe with boobs and bell-bottoms.

During my senior year, an enthusiastic accomplice bolstered my mistaken literary notions. She looked at me and saw potential and unformed talent. I looked back and saw a morbidly obese English teacher with a five o’clock shadow. When I took the time to look again, I saw a beautiful and compassionate woman who cared enough about her students to actually teach them. While I appreciated the efforts on my behalf, her encouragement couldn’t compete with apathy and an inability to think of anything to write.

The time it took to finish my first book lasted about the same amount of time as my marriage and the involuntary period of celibacy after my divorce - five years. I had nothing to show during that time other than an unnatural fear of dating and some positive editorial comments scribbled in the margins of my manuscript. Nearly two decades inched along like a funeral procession, with me occasionally writing a children’s book, but mostly just trying to survive the life of a single parent. I rarely spared a thought for anything other than raising my daughter and work.

As a college dropout, the humdrum jobs I held provided numerous opportunities for character driven stories, but I couldn’t force the ideas out of my head and into print where they belonged. After my first retail job as an assistant manager of a jewelry store, I spent fifteen years as a legal secretary

It took a lawyer and an e-mail from a friend to end forty years of writer’s block. The despicable lawyer relentlessly drove me towards a self-diagnosed nervous breakdown. With no savings or prospects, I quit my job and accepted the first one offered - patient advocate in a drug and alcohol rehab facility. The fancy title just meant I had become a glorified babysitter of foul-mouthed teens, but at least I’d no longer be given impossible deadlines by a procrastinating misogynist who dabbled in overt racism.

After two years I quit my job at the rehab facility and became the manager of a bookstore, thereby breaking a lifelong vow to never return to retail. My love of books kept me there for years.

New and different ideas swirled around in my mind like fermenting alphabet soup, but I still didn’t have a clue how to turn them into a coherent story. If my friend hadn’t forwarded me an e-mail one night, I’d still be a wallflower wearing a crooked tiara at the prom, staring with longing across the gym at my elusive destiny. Her email contained a link to the annual novel writing project, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The project’s goal was to encourage writers to complete at least 50,000 words in thirty days.

I once created a strange comic book world which featured an unusual protagonist. My illustrator spent more time smoking weed than drawing and instead of an actual comic book, the finished product became a short story with a few excellent illustrations. I spent years dreaming of getting revenge against the lawyer by portraying him as the villain in a novel featuring the hero of my faux comic book. I even wrote the first few paragraphs before giving it up as a lost cause.

As I stared at my computer monitor, I decided to give my revenge therapy one more shot and signed up for the NaNoWriMo project. It never occurred to me that I would finish more than a couple of pages. November 1st arrived and I started writing. That very first night something in me changed. Funny lines kept coming to me faster than I could type them. I’d start laughing and run quote them to my most amusing cat, Wally Wanker, then run back to the other room and write another line.

November is almost as busy as December in a bookstore. It's Hexmas, a hellish prelude to the joyous season, with so much product being shipped there’s no place to stock it. As manager, I worked long hours and came home exhausted every night. It should have been impossible for me to write a book in thirty days under those circumstances, but every night I sat down in front of the computer and began typing. On the very last evening of the NaNoWriMo project, I interrupted Wally Wanker’s ball licking with a goofy little dance and the pronouncement that I’d finished my novel. My old lady high kicks bore no resemblance to a Rockette’s, but they did cause Wally Wanker to take a break from his favorite pastime and leave the room.

After a major rewrite the novel still needed more editing, but its initial completion became the catalyst I’d been seeking for decades. These days, nearly everything I observe becomes a story. I went from being the woman who could barely write a grocery list, to being the woman who takes notes on the back of one. Now I see an apocalypse in a half-eaten bowl of cereal, a lonely bunny frozen in a random pile of rocks and a cry for help in the pattern of a throw rug.

On my way to the grocery store one day, I saw a paunchy old man revving the engine of his Harley-Davidson at an intersection. I reminded myself to write about my recent butt-busting motorcycle accident and the peculiar urges many middle-aged people seem to share.

Once in the store, ideas for stories ambushed me on nearly every aisle - a woman who had something sticking out of her pocket which resembled a huge erection, a hippie wearing split-toed Japanese Tabi boots, a wink from an attractive man as he stood trapped by a talkative elderly gentleman and a woman with a cross tattooed on her bare leg.

On my way home, inspiration came full circle as I followed a motorcycle driven by a young man wearing nothing but denim shorts and flip-flops. My imagination conjured a panic-stricken woman bending over his body and discovering her cell phone had died. The story turned in a completely different direction at the same time the road did. The motorcyclist had vanished and so did the tragic story of metallic and asphalt carnage. It became a story about a supernatural bike. The biker’s mysterious disappearance probably had a logical explanation, but that didn’t prevent me from seeing the magic in our chance encounter.

I had finally become what I always claimed to be – a writer.