21 December 2022
Sometime during Thanksgiving, Dear Husband half-jokingly said to me that I’ve got six weeks left in the year to write that last Western. I’d firmly stated that I want/need a year off from writing a novel.
THE SILENT HEART is to be the last one of the Westerns, at least the last of the ones I’ve planned.
This fictional work hopes to encompass all of the previous ones. My creative mind works like a sieve, permitting certain grains of imagination to sift through my analytical thoughts, on their way to actualization.
I’m very rarely aware of this process. Usually, I’m working on another project, but the creative mind is always at work. Last year at this time, I wondered if my sewing activities would take precedence over composing fiction. By November of this year, I pretty much knew the answer to that private pondering.
Last week, I read my essay of Christmas 2017, wherein I’d stated, with a high level of resolution:
There will be more gifts from this writer on this website, but I cannot state precisely what they will be. A new poetry volume in the spring, yes. Novels, eventually, yes. Monthly Essays, no.
Upon occasion, I will write an essay that will not let me be, and I will then post it as part of the Continuing Composition Series.
I shall also add new treasures to The Art Gallery of this website. A guest post or two might even come along, to my delight!
I daresay that I’ve written more essays for my website AFTER December 2017 than I had before that date!
It’s comical, even hilarious, the way that I toss off a conclusion, with inordinate strength of mind and will — only to contradict, reverse, alter, revise, transform, and adjust that determined stance. I’m very consistent in that behaviour, and gladly so.
I do not permit myself to become boxed in by a choice made with seemingly irreversible certitude, or by an attitude that’s definitely got to change. Life can throw you a curveball, or a fastball, or a foosball, and you must give way to change.
Thus, when I wrote “the Last One”, a part of me chuckled. There might be another Western or two, yet to come to life within my writing life. If so, then the Last One will get shuffled in line for a New One.
Maybe saying “the Last One” is my way of advancing toward newness, toward the unknown, and following wherever divine will, or kismet, or destiny leads me.
Never say never, and think of “the last” as introductory to “a first”.