The Hard Part

 

My Dearest Readers,

 

How are you doing?

I’m doing well, and…

…Happy to have the whole weekend ahead for posting the next chapters here on the blog. That should be exciting. 🙂

 

Thank you for reading me. 😊

 

Thank you for laughing out loud, for crying sad tears of empathy (good for you!)…

…Hopefully not tears welling up from your own personal pain…

Thank you for rooting for Anna: for a hope and a future. 🙏

And for being brave to let this story induce your self-reflection and growth. I solemnly swear to keep my fingers crossed for all of us.

(Anyway… These are the things dozens of my readers have told me on the comment sections below, as well as on my other social media).

 

Once a week, I read a chapter or two aloud to Joey, my awesome son.

He’s said, “Mom, I love your style. You’re funny!! I’m not divorced, you know, so your story is not that relatable to me, but… I can imagine it must be to so many divorced oldies out there.”

When I’m driving, he reads my latest chapter aloud (for us to review it together), making funny voices and giving my feelings the wrong intonations and all the wrong intentions.

Eurgh. Such teasing is horrible! Later, when I try to read the chapter again on my own, I can’t remember how I meant it anymore. I can just hear Joey’s interpretation and I feel quite desperate. Haha.

At other times, when I’m writing and he is sitting nearby making one more of his amazingly creative, funny, deep and darkly sarcastic drawings, he comes to me, takes control of my hands and changes my text.

For example like this:

 

Or then like this:

 

Oh God, I am so grateful for Joey. Don’t know where I’d be without his companionship in 2017… We are both artists and have lots of friendship chemistry. Love you, Joey!! You make me happy and so proud, cool boy.

 

Anyway.

As I was saying…

 

Dear reader, if you’ve accompanied the story this far and are feeling curious at all about Christian… (I’ve been called cruel for the way I finished the last chapter – and I loved it) …that’s good!

But please, bear with me just a little while longer (and I’ll tell you why you should).

For one, I’m doing my best.

Writing is just a hobby alongside my full-time job and volleyball and friends and a nice tidy home and quality time with my teens, etc.

It’s the first time I’m writing a book and hmmm! It is much harder than it seems.

It takes hours!

Thinking, planning (and then doing the exact opposite), feeling it, rephrasing, re-reading and doing some editing. Hours and hours. What takes me forever to write takes you literally three minutes to read – have you considered that?

But that’s all very, very easy in comparison to…

Not the hard part at all.

 

So, what’s the hard part???

Hmm. Let’s see.

After reading about forty chapters, my daughter Kristiina called me one night. She was overwhelmed with tears. “Mom, I’m so sorry for all the things you went through. You are such a wonderful person, happy and loving, and you deserve the best. I remember so many things you’re not telling the reader. You should tell them even more – they need to understand! I remember.”

I had to calm her down. Comfort her.

“Aww. Such a beautiful empathetic heart you have!

“Don’t worry, darling. I just write so strongly for the reader to be able to feel my old feelings… And…

“Yes!!!” — I celebrate — “Yay! Don’t cry, sweetie, but I’m happy to be causing such strong reactions. You’re the fourth to tell me they’ve cried to the story – so I must be doing something right…?”

 

There you go.

The hard part is not writing, creating, and editing.

The hard part is feeling it.

Either revisting my emotions concerning things I no longer feel… (Out of respect to you, my reader, who is giving me your valuable time and attention).

Or harder yet…

It can be even harder to allow myself to feel the things I still feel very strongly.

I cried like a baby when I wrote chapter 21. Saudade.

Or when I told my sister about chapter 31. Wept. Big Sigh.

The hopes and dreams, the fears and frustrations, the wonderful memories. So vivid! Sorry. Can’t reveal much more at this moment.

No spoilers.

Besides… a little mystery is always good.

Layer by layer, right? 😊 Suspense.

I love surprises. I love twists of fate. Drama movies, crises to use as stepping stones, victories.

Surprise calls, surprise visits! Please?

Hmm. Good surprises, of course… “Bad surprises we call problems,” as Tony Robbins says.

 

My blog is my draft zero, and I promise you, soooo many things are going to happen before the end of the book… if you’ll like them or not is your problem. They happened and I can’t change the facts now.

Or can I?

This story will only be about 2016 – I know exactly where and when and how book 1 ends. It’s quite dramatic (that much I can reveal). In fact, I’ve already written many of the final chapters.

With all my heart.

 

Eurgh. I can only hope for book 2 someday – and a happy ending to Anna’s tale. Or maybe I’ll be too busy with daily love to be here writing about it. I’ll be enjoying it, instead.

(But am I enjoying monthly love in 2017? Weekly? Bi-yearly?)

More chapters coming to you this weekend, amigos. Finnish intention, Brazilian promise!

In fact, I’m going to start writing the next one right now. Write now, Anna.

“No! I’ll do it after my 11 p.m. Friday nap.”

© 2017 rf

 

 

Obs. One of those weekends alone in 2017. Day zillion since moving out. When I wake up from my nap, I will write.