Ongoing Project

This has been sort of a background, on-going project of mine for several decades. It began 25-30 years ago while standing in yet another line, waiting for my turn. Being the chatty person I am, I started talking to the woman in front of me, and by the time it was her turn, I knew most of her life story.

If that had been the sole instance, or if such things had remained rare, I might never have given it another thought.

But, time and again, people would spill their dreams and life stories in my ear while doing the boring things we often do – waiting in line, waiting in waiting rooms, waiting for our turn at something we felt we had to do.

It was a long time before I decided to “collect” these gifts, so the early day stories are jumbled and mishmashed with others. It was an even longer time before I knew how I wanted to display this collection.

In recent years, it sort of came together in the way that patterns do, and I knew I wanted to showcase these ordinary lives in a novel. I’ve never written a contemporary novel before. My forte has been either children’s stories, mythic stories, or science fictional stories with just a soupcon of fantasy. But these stories want telling. They are the stories of the average American, woven into an almost mythic framework. These are stories from young women, old women, women my age, men, boys, black, white, red, yellow, brown, mixed. These stories cross economic lines as well – becasue sometimes even the wealthy have to wait.

I’ve always been comfortable in myself, and willing to listen to anyone who talks to me. I’m not a psychologist or a psychotherapist. I’m not offering any analysis of these stories, I just want to tell them, in the framework most familiar to me.

I want to call this novel The Fruit of the Stone, but feel it may be too obscure. A good, alternative title might be Voyage to the Next Room, but I’m also attracted to the appropriate image of Tears Full of Song.I have the last line written, and the opening sequence. I also have hundreds of ordinary stories to put into the framework, and I think I only have room for maybe a baker’s dozen or two.