Thompson’s Writing Journey—Status Report

Dear Reader:
          If you were wondering why I hadn’t written for six months, it’s because I wintered in Burnout. If you’ve ever stopped there, you understand. In October, one of my adult children was hospitalized in the Intensive Care Unit. After that, I had a medicolegal problem that weighed me down. Neither issue was the kind of thing I could write about—and I felt muzzled.
          I’m finally back, though I needed a few months to be certain. Pouring twenty hours per week into my keyboard, I’m making headway on my novels once more. An accomplished writer of historical fiction, Melanie Dobson, recently edited my Book I. She gave me the feedback I needed to make the manuscript agent-worthy. Since receiving her ten-page summary letter and 500 bullseye comments, I’ve spent six weeks revising. At her suggestion, I added a prologue, reworked chapter one, and learned how to write a character-driven synopsis.
          Thank you for sticking with me through the years. If you enjoy the essays that follow, please comment and invite your friends along for the ride. I write for you, but you also strengthen me. On the day I have 10,000 readers, I will no longer be struggling to secure my first agent and book contract. Then we will proceed together on the road to publication.

Burnout (Part I)

          How I ended up walking aimlessly across an open, dusty prairie, with paper in one hand and a stylus in the other, I can only speculate. My best guess is I was searching for inspiration, finding nothing, and letting my feet take me wherever they will. Many writers do that.
          I pulled my hat down against the glare of the rising sun and wished I had a canteen. My lip cracked, and I tasted blood.
          A family of tumbleweeds crossed my path. One struck me on the side and knocked me off course. Blasted wind. I followed the tumbleweeds into the distance as they rolled around a slope and out of sight.
          Then a strange thing happened. From the place where the tumbleweeds had disappeared, a dark-skinned woman emerged from the grasses. She waved something white overhead as if she had been searching for me. So I waved back. She picked up her skirts and began running my way. As the gusts of wind eased off, I heard her calling me by name.
          “TAT, wait up-pa,” she said, her voice like music.
          Her stride was most unusual, and more like a gallop the faster she ran. Her right arm was missing from the elbow down, which gave her an obvious imbalance. But her legs were even more mysterious, for she had two sets of knees, an upper and a lower. Her running technique was a marvel I’d never seen before.
          She came to me gasping and unable to speak from the exertion. I waited patiently and kept studying her, for she was most strange. She leaned forward, her chest still heaving, to rest her single hand upon one of those upper knees.
          “I’m so glad I caught you-wa,” she said at last, standing tall. “For once I got to you in time-ma.” She put her bonnet on—that was the white cloth she had been waving—and so covered her long, lustrous hair, golden in the morning sun, a sparking light upon the darkness of her smooth cheeks.
          “Who are you?” I said.
          “I’m Joy, and you ought to know that by now-wa, but you’re too brain-addled once again. You’re on the straight road back to Burnout, but you don’t even know it-a.”
          “I should know you, so you say, but I don’t. I’ve never seen you or your kind in all my life. What are you?”
          “I’m a turav-a, a female of the travo-turav-an race. But that doesn’t matter much, does it?”
          “Understanding the world and the people in it matters to me.”
          “Oh, really?”
          “Don’t you think I know what matters?”
          “Not a bit.”
          “You’re just a figure in one of my dreams. Not real and not sensible. You call yourself Joy, though you’re missing an arm. You say you’re a turav-a, not a human, “but that doesn’t matter much.” And now, you come racing across the prairie, calling my name, and smiling ear to ear.”
          “I’m so glad I got to you ahead of the Whisperer-a. There’s no point in answering all your questions now-wa, when you haven’t even got your wits back-a.”
          “Fine. I’ll play along. Why don’t you think I have my wits?”
          “That paper you carry that says goals-a.”
          “What about it?”
          “It’s blank-a.”
          “For now.”
          “Aren’t you TAT?”
          “I am.”
          “Aren’t you the one who emerged from the Sierras of Youth at age eighteen and headed straight for the Rock Ladders of Strength-a?”
          “That was a long time ago.”
          “You always had goals-a. Recall how you pressed on relentlessly to the Slopes of Achievement-a?”
          “They seemed to stretch on forever. If there was an end to them, I wanted to be the first one to find it. How do you know this stuff?”
          “I know all about you-wa,” Joy said, nodding with certainty, as if she were my mother. “I know how you started down Single Man’s Way, wide at the beginning but narrowing at the foothills of the Mountains of Love-va.”
          “That’s my story,” I said.
          “You had such goals back then-a.”
          “I should tell my own story.”
          “Of course,” she said. “Go ahead-a.”
          I put my hands together in the way of the story tellers from my youth. “I had just left the home of my birth when The Pools of Beauty first captivated me. The Slopes of Achievement flew high in the distance. I instantly knew I had a choice—stick to Single Man’s Way—which was narrow, rugged, and steep—or switch to the Paired Pathways. Go back to The Mountains of Love or head straight for the Slopes of Achievement.”
          “But you determined to do both-a.” Joy shook her head, her eyes sparkling. “Say no more. No doubt you’re headed back down into the Valley-a. I can’t stop you, but will you take this message to Slim for me-ya?”
          “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
          “Just do it. Take it to Slim. Tell him it’s from Joy.”
          “Fine,” I said. “I’m living in a dream.”

To Be Continued . . .

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