By Evelyn David
I don't usually count
on inspiration in my work. I count on the belief that if I show up, keep my
butt in the chair, hold a potato gun to my head, and make myself sit there,
something writerish will happen.
I'll get some words
down on paper, or the on screen.
They will suck.
I love Anne Lamott. Her book on writing, Bird by Bird,
captures perfectly the reality of being an author: the good, the bad, and the
very ugly. First drafts, Lamott aptly points out, are by definition crappy. Out of the first 100 words written, you
might like 10 – but that's 10 more than you had before. Maybe you'll like 15 of
the next 100 words.Maybe not. But you make progress only if you actually write. And that
my friends, is a point I had sadly forgotten.
What I should have remembered is what Thomas Edison once
said: Success is 10 percent inspiration
and 90 percent perspiration. And to quote one more truth from Mr. Edison: I am not discouraged, because every wrong
attempt discarded is another step forward.
All of which may help explain what the two halves of Evelyn
David have been doing since last Fall. Besides struggling with one miserable
snowstorm after another; juggling work and family responsibilities; and
celebrating some happy events in our lives – we've also been circling around a
story that we couldn't quite nail down for months. And sometimes, the circling
meant just plain ignoring it. Instead we chatted on Facebook; wrote blogs;
played Scramble with Friends; ate chocolate.
Now the snowstorms, the work responsibilities, the family
demands, even the chocolate, are all reasonable excuses for why we haven't written much more than
grocery lists for the past three months. I can even rationalize that that
taking time off has given us a perspective on this story that was much needed. No
doubt you often have to step back to see the big picture, what can be fixed,
and what needs to be dumped pronto.
But 10 days ago, after a weekend of celebrating my son's
engagement to a lovely young woman, and then bidding a tearful farewell as another
of my sons and his family moved to Paris
(Yipes), I finally sat down, reread the story, and chatted with the Southern
half. What had in November seemed impossible to finish, suddenly didn't seem
too hard at all. The kernel of the story was, pardon my pride, fantastic. And I discovered, dare I say it, it was fun to write again. I laughed out loud at some of
our scenes. I fell in love, once more, with the world of Brianna Sullivan. I had
missed her future mother-in-law Sassy Jackson, her best friend Beverly Heyman, her hunky fiance Cooper, and perhaps most of all, her bulldog Leon ,
despite his wonky digestive tract.
We had to rewrite, tweak, edit, revise, delete, and then
write some more. But the end result, LEAVING LOTTAWATAH, is the story we always
wanted to tell. For us, the essence of storytelling is compelling, believable
characters. We think you'll find a new depth to Brianna Sullivan, psychic
extraordinaire. We delve deeper into the life she has created for herself in the small town of Lottawatah , Oklahoma .
There a murder mystery to die for (pun intended) and humor to make you laugh
out loud.
So please Enjoy, Enjoy! It's good to be back! And we're not planning on taking any more hiatuses. Snowstorms or not, we're writing!
Marian and Rhonda, the collective Evelyn David
P.S. We're also delighted to announce that A HAUNTING IN
LOTTAWATAH, the fifth book in the Brianna Sullivan series, is now available as
an audiobook. Once again narrated by the fantastic Wendy Tremont King, A HAUNTING IN LOTTAWATAH proves that ghost hunting can be deadly.
