All is not joyous in Annie-land today. Nothing big. No bad tidings, no hopes dashed. Just a case of the everyday blues made worse when I learned via Facebook that my hubby's family had a big event that we were not invited to. Probably an oversight but that doesn't actually make it better, to be over sighted by people you love and think of often and want great things for all the time. It's an awful aloneness, to find out by accident they don't feel the same way, and then...
And then I write.
Wrote a heartfelt note to my own family, who would never do this, even by accident. Who would never turn me away, who would feed me (I allowed that cold cereal would be all right but it had to be from a box with a cartoon character on the front!). And this evening when the heaviness came over me again, I thought about tomorrow and the fact that I get to work on a book proposal for a book that I truly love. A book with a message of hope and the theme that so many of my books have - letting go. I get to spend my day with words, creating characters and dialog and a setting outside and apart from my hurt feelings, bad hair days, money troubles, whatever is going on.
Years ago a fellow writer told me she'd been reading one of my books in a little out of the way cafe when a waitress who looked like she'd never seen a day of easy work, noticed and said she'd read that book. She'd like it. A few minutes later the waitress came by again to say why she'd liked it - it had made her feel good after a bad day. The waitress found reasons to stop by my friend's table the whole time she was there to talk about my book. My friend wanted me to know that and to remind me of something that has become my writing motto: It is never a wasted effort to lift a weary heart.
I was always humbled to think my writing did that for others. I am encouraged and comforted to know writing can also do this for me, just by sitting down and putting my hands on the keyboard...
Writing helps.
