Faith in Art
I probably would never have begun if I had known that my mother was going to die. If I’d known that, I’d have finished the book I went on retreat to write, gone home to be with her, and never have attempted fiction. Well, I didn’t know it, and isn’t that the way of the world?
I’d gone to the White Mountains of Arizona in late January 1997 to write a
book about how to use peace in all sorts of situations. It’s called Circles
of Peace, (available for free on my website) and I was really proud of it.
On Valentine’s Day of that year, I went to the post office and mailed it off
to my editor in Santa Fe. Then I turned the car around and went back to my writing
retreat.
It began to snow—fat, lazy flakes—those kind that seem to make no never mind until they all add up. I sat down on the sofa wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my stay when I heard a voice say, “So, are you going to write my story now?”
We need a slight pause here … selah, as they say in the Psalms. I need to tell you that I’ve been hearing voices in my mind for almost 50 years. I’m an intuitive who is, for the most part, clairaudient, someone with “clear hearing.” So it wasn’t particularly unusual for me to hear a voice in my mind. What was unusual was whose voice it was.
“Uh, I guess so,” I answered. Not a clue as to whom I was addressing.
I also need to tell you that my mother, Amelia, was a very talented woman who got lost in house-holding and never got her creative groove back. She’d always wanted to write mystery novels. Four children and four husbands kept her introverted self way too busy to follow her dreams.
Anyway, I sat down at the kitchen table under one of those standard issue glaring, swinging 70s kitchen lamps with my back to the gathering snow and opened a Works file. (Remember Works? That’s how long ago this was!) It was February 14, 1997. Mexicali Rose Stone was born into literary reality that day. Little did I know what she would do to my life.
So I ignored the now faster-falling snow and began to write seriously. I wrote unceasingly. Just what I was told to write. I discovered what I was writing as I wrote it. It felt like I had fallen into a room in my computer that held the story, a room I hadn’t known was there but had known was there all along, if you know what I mean. At age 39, I became a novelist.
Wait! I protested. I don’t write fiction. I write non-fiction. I read non-fiction. I kept on anyway. When I got to page 26, long enough for what I could think of as a serious beginning, I started to fall into a well, a chasm, an abyss of doubt. What do I know about writing fiction? Nothing. I read fiction rarely. But I was intrigued by Mexicali — I now knew, “You can call me Mex” — Rose Stone, my intuitive investigator protagonist.
That night, certain that I’d gone round the twist, I decided to email my dear friend Kenneth. He lived in New York City. So I mustered up my email and edit/copy/pasted all 26 pages into one email (this was long before attachments) and sent it to him. I asked him to read it and tell me honestly what he thought. It was the early hours of the morning and I crashed into sleep.
The phone woke me. No one knew where I was except mama and Kenneth. I blew out of bed to the phone, certain that something bad had happened. “Hello?”
On the other end was a being laughing so hard that it took him nearly a minute to identify himself. Finally Kenneth gasped out, “Oh, Miss Susan, oh, Miss Susan! She’s hilarious. Totally, completely, remarkably hysterical. Keep going.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Totally. Keep writing. There’s a novel here.”
We made an agreement that whatever pages I completed on a particular day I would send to him for his breakfast reading. I had visions of Cap’n Crunch and Kenneth in Manhattan laughing over the antics of my Mex. (It was more likely yogurt and fruit in defense of his fast-breaking choices.)
Over the next ten days, I wrote like a banshee. I researched on the Internet
like a madwoman. I sent nightly emails to Kenneth. I ate chocolate and smoked
cigarettes and listened to the fabulicious Della Reese sing on her album Voice
of An Angel, and as time elapsed, I, like Della on her first cut, was beginning
to see the light despite the now seriously amassing snow. (My car had disappeared!)
On the eleventh night, I was through. (Not by a long shot, really.) I had a
350-page draft of a mystery novel sitting on my coffee table. The home care
wizards were set to plow out my car the next day so I could go back to the Valley.
I decided to watch the movie of Brigadoon…
Stayed tuned for the next installment: the story continues…
for spritiual nourishment, Dr. Susan Corso’s blog, Seeds for Sanctuary
A library of Susan’s writing.
Twitter @PeaceCorso … answer what peace is to you. "2me, peace is the only option."
God’s Dictionary, divine definitions.
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