Trust Your Crazy Ideas

It’s Wednesday morning and Leah is staring out into the gray forest.

The grass is greening up. Daffodils are blooming.

Buds are visible on the pear and the peach trees.

Yesterday Leah wrote so easily.

Words, sentences, scenes flowed with practically no effort on her part.

She felt so free describing the little miracles she experiences.

Coincidences. Synchronicities.

What her husband calls “coinkydinkies.”

Today, however, the whole notion that she is writing a novel about these

miracles and

her ancestors

feels absurd. Dangerous.

How many times has she heard herself moaning to her husband,

“I can’t write another novel. How can I do that, when the last one didn’t sell very well?”

She picks up her journal and writes:

“I am feeling very doubtful.”

At that very moment she hears her husband come walking down the hall. He stops outside the closed door of her study and calls out to her:

“I just read your post. I enjoyed it a lot.”

She thanks him. And then she realizes that the reason she’s feeling doubtful about her writing is because this morning a piece called “BREATHING THE GARDEN” is published in the literary blog, Two Drops of Ink.

When she reread the post on-line a few minutes ago, she decided it wasn’t particularly good. And it didn’t belong in the book.

She felt embarrassed. Exposed. She can imagine someone laughing at what she wrote.

She goes back to her journal and writes. “I’ve got to believe in my own writing. These pages I’m writing might never become a novel or a book of any kind but still I have to love it like it’s one of my children.”

She goes to the translator now and brings it up in Italian:

“Devo credere nel mio stesso modo di scrivere. Queste pagine potrebbero no diventare mai un romanzo o un libro di alcun tipo, ma devo comunque amarlo come se fosse uno dei miei figli.”

“I am writing this book on behalf of my family, my ancestors.”

“Sto scrivando questo libro a nome della mia famiglia, I miei antenati.”

She looks up and sees hanging on the wall the small sign that her dear friend Kellie bought for her:

TRUST YOUR CRAZY IDEAS.

“FIDATI DELLE TUE IDEE FOLLI.”

Folli. Folly. Yes, writing books is on one level total folly.

But all she knows is, she can’t help herself. She feels thoroughly swept up in this new writing project.

She glances down to the left on her desk and sees the small handmade sign that her daughter Lindsay made for her many many years before:

“Writing is Nothing More then a Guided Dream,” – Jorge Luis Borges

She goes to the laptop and prints out “BREATHING THE GARDEN” and adds the pages to the giant purple notebook where she is storing PEARLY EVERLASTING.