Write. Right. Run.

Write. Right. Run.

 

“How do you know, I mean do you totally trust that what you wrote is correct English?”

 

A friend asks skeptically, it is discouraging to me. Awaken, woken the culprits in question. I Google and find an answer that makes both of us correct.

 

He is not the only one that has had similar comments. Better to be right (actually correct is better no moral connotation), rather than responsive seems to be the consensus. I understand.  I have heard this before that is why the book has sat so long and so many more are stretching their fingers out to me.

 

English. Correct English. Stop.

 

There is only one time to make a first impression, but what readers do not understand is I am not here to impress anyone. I am here to heal and to let those that are on my path to know they are not alone. We are on the path together, maybe ahead or maybe a bit behind but we are moving forward. What is important to know, is that we will get out of the woods.

 

Take my hand.

 

I am not your typical writer. Look at this memoir, as the work of someone trying to straighten the shelves of a library, the library of the last thirty years of a life, well-lived in “for better and for worse.” My writing was created over thirty years in three countries with slivers of memories from those in the supporting roles. My memory has great pools of numbness but I have tried my best with the “forensics.”

 

As the visitor in my home tries to distill who I am by what they see on the bookshelf, there is much and more to interpret. Much like the shelves in our home that do not represent who we are, so are the memories of our lives incomplete, distributed between continents.

 

It is my hope that The Other Side of Tuscany serves as a catalyst to what I have to share on a deeper level one that has been blocked with musty baggage. The greater good of humanity sparks within the tiny courage of one. This is my courageous attempt to launch and to leap and to live again.

 

Frame the next few hundred pages as a journal that has been collected over time and dropped in to a viewfinder for closer review. There are only so many slides that fit. For each slide, there are a 100 missing. Do not try to wrap your mind around what is logical and what is not. The images belong together and the answers are all here, or within you.

 

I was once told there are not a lot of great writers, just persistent ones. I guess that is all that really counts isn’t it?

 

Persistence. Courageous persistence. Run.