I have very poor eyesight. There hasn’t been any sight in the left eye since birth. The right, well, that’s cataracts, a matter of aging. So I taught myself to dictate so I could continue to write. Then, I discovered I’d had a pinpoint stroke and some other unpleasant brain-related issues. Now, I have some intermittent speech problems and the attention span of a flea. So much for dictation. Writing in longhand, as I did way back when is out. Arthritis. I’m lucky I can grip an orange!
It’s been said that God never throws more at us than we can handle. He must think stubbornness is strength.
I have all kinds of book ideas that will probably never be written because I’m so much slower than I used to be–and I’m not getting any younger. Back the the ’80s, I wrote The Unicorn’s Daughter in four months and it required very little editing. Ten years ago, I finished Chasing the Wind after working on it for ten years. There are at least five projects on the back burner at the moment. I want to write them. The ideas are there, forming, percolating–but they never seem to get any further.
Am I giving up? No, not yet. In a few weeks, I’ll be publishing a collection of posts from my personal blog, The Three Rs: Rants, Raves and (Occasional) Reflections. I have a memoir almost finished, Sam’s Story in progress, and Collin and I are working on a series that started with Chasing the Wind. With Collin collaborating, I can at least get that far.
I started a novel featuring five secondary characters from Chasing the Wind, but found it had no plot–and a comedy about the quirky residents of a college town, including a booze hound who really is a dog. Just a bunch of episodes. I thought they would have to be scrapped. Then I remembered that my partner in crime, William Kendall, does several serials within his blog, Speak of the Devil–including one featuring a cranky Mountie who hates entertainment reporters.
Maybe these projects aren’t dead, after all. At least not until I am….
Norma Beishir/Collin Beishir 