“When a magazine publisher asks you to submit something, you do it,” Author Kim Suhr said last night at her book signing event with writer/poet Jim Landwher interviewing her at Boswell Book Company for her new book, Close Call.

“Carefully crafted, surprising, and humane, the stories of Kim Suhr’s unveil emotion in tight spaces, hearts in turmoil, and the searching soul of the Midwest.”

Phew, I thought… I’d almost said no when a magazine editor asked if I could submit something by the deadline. I was too deep at work on the novel, I told her. (It seems I’m less able to do two things at once than I once was.)

But then she asked, “Can you write something about writing your novel…?”

Well, I happened to have written a few things about that, so I asked if a reprint would be okay. When she said, yes, I asked the editor of Creative Wisconsin, Lisa Lickel, for her okay on a story she had published. “As long as you give CW credit,” she said. (Don’t you love her?) So I sent it off and, after I heard Kim speak last night, I was relieved I did. 

Oh, how I need my writing community! Thank you, Kim, Jim, Lisa and Laurie Scheer, who got me through my first draft four years ago. 

But I keep returning to the question of why write a debut novel at this point in life, of all the things I might be doing, why in the world would I choose that. 

“Why not?” my author/choreographer friends Marie Kohler and Maria Gillespie said when I stopped to say hi at Stone Creek this week as they were working together on a new project that Marie is directing and Maria is choreographing to be performed at Next Act Theatre in February. 

Why not? I thought as I walked home, inspired by them both. 

“It’s a slog,” Jim said last night about writing his novel and Kim Suhr agreed about writing hers.  And I agree, too.

Kim is generous and kind both as a writer/author and teacher/coach She doesn’t know this, but at one of her Red Oak Writing Roundtable discussions years ago, she had us each write a story, free flow, at the end of the session. I didn’t read mine in class that day but that story became the inciting incident in my novel. 

Like I said, I really need my writing community. 

While I was dusting this morning (which is something I rarely do and, oh my, that has to change) I reached up high on a shelf to dust off a book cover and pulled it down. The Odyssey. Interesting, I thought. The hero’s journey. Just yesterday I did a little reading up on the hero’s journey after I’d written a sentence about my protagonist’s journey not being a hero’s journey. 

As I dug deeper, I realized how my story actually did fit into that story structure without me even planning it. (Like Jim, I write by the headlights.) And maybe this is why it does fit: we, like our stories, are all on a hero’s journey, each day in different ways. We hear “the call”. The question is, will we follow?

For example, I might start out the morning of my ordinary day, (with a prayer, a devotion, a scripture or two), hear “the call”, resist or refuse to follow, then decide to and get on with the day. All sorts of unexpected things happen. And at this moment I’m thinking about my friends in Florida and North Carolina, my gosh, talk about the hero’s journeys of these people who are still in the midst of it, before they’d recovered from the last hurricane, or the one before that…

We dig in deeper, don’t we? We have to. (What’s the option?) And soon we realize how we’ve grown or changed, finding ourselves with a greater appreciation for who and what we have in our ordinary lives, in our sometimes extra-ordinary days, than we did that morning.

We realize we’re living with a greater sense of peace and freedom. And acceptance. (And this is where I hear my husband’s voice in my head saying, “That’s enough, stop writing or you’ll wear your readers out.”) but I have just a little more to say.

We have a saying as writers about writing only what you can see within a one inch picture frame or in the headlights on a dark night. It’s a good way to live, too, actually. It’s so easy to get ahead of ourselves and ahead of God, worrying about getting through, finishing the work and our work on earth well. We keep going back to the beginning, we want to nail the ending. We learn to walk by faith not by sight, in the present. 

For me, it’s up to the Author and Perfecter of my faith. Because that’s all this is about in the end. The story is already written, the four years work on it has been about opening my heart, and my eyes to see things and people more and more from God’s perspective, to hear more clearly, learn to listen better, to simply surrender. It begins there. 

Working together with my Muse the Spirit, what I’ve found is this: I see more and more with eyes of love and the story, like me, keeps transforming. 

To my friends in the middle of Milton, I’m sending a huge hug. You’re our heros and we’re praying for you. Keep going.

And that’s what I have to say about writing a novel today.

Thank you, Kim and Jim, Laurie and Lisa. And thanks Wisconsin Writers Association (Luella, Christy, Ken) and Boswell (Daniel) for my wonderful reading and writing community!