| 2007 Third Prize Winner - No Entry Fee Division
A Fabulous Year
By Eva M. Lemeh
Being a self-employed bankruptcy trustee whose caseload in one year
reduced from one-hundred cases a month to forty, it would be a
blessing to be paid to take one year off to write. Writing became a
passion for me in late November 1993, two months after learning my
mother had incurable renal cancer that had already spread to her
brain. I have started almost ten novels in the thirteen years since my
mother was diagnosed, never having the time or inclination to complete
but 1 of them. That novel was completed in the year I took off after
my mother's death.
In that year I spent over ten hours a day at various times during the
day sitting at my dinosaur Dell computer. It sat on a desk in the
downstairs office of the home I shared with my then husband and two
stepsons. In that year off, every morning, afternoon, evening, dusk
and/or dawn, I would sneak into the office and peck on the computer
keyboard. Each keystroke releasing the hurt, the anger, the anguish,
the sorrow, the depression and the worst, the disappointment at now
having become an orphan. But from that year of writing came a lifetime
of discovery and of release from an otherwise uncreative life, at
least in the sense of artistic creativity.
A basketball gym rat that played in college and still plays now in her
46th year, I discovered a knack for self expression long lost and
forgotten. Reading short stories I wrote in my early years that I
retrieved from my mother's house breathed new life into this sterile
legal eagle. A year to write free from financial concerns, because my
two dogs, numerous fish and I love our house and love to eat, would
allow me to once again explore my creative side, which I laid down
upon entry into law school in August 1983.
Since I sleep less than four hours a night, I would again creep down
into my downstairs office….., nah, I now have a laptop, so I could sit
up in bed, depress the light switch on the fan/light remote and take
up whatever subject matter I last wrote on or begin anew with whatever
phenomenal subject matter my dreams had awakened in me. With the
advent of spell check, I have become a fifty word an hour typist that
does not worry about spelling, grammar or the like until I have
exhausted the literary description/depiction of the topic I am
covering at that moment. To just write down a stream of consciousness
is most liberating for me.
So my year would be spent carrying my laptop around my home: sitting
at the kitchen table, in a lawn chair at the edge of my pond and
leaning over the edge of my bathtub. I will wander the halls of my
house and write and write and write, then when I can no longer bear
not knowing what I have written, I will read and edit. Now don't cry
for me Argentina because with the great creation of laptops comes the
freedom to write at almost any location. So when I am at the hair
salon or need an iced decaf caramel macchiato with whip, I will still
be writing. When I am in Hermitage spending time with a gorgeous
thirty-something young man I have the great pleasure of hanging with
from time to time, I will be writing. When I am at my 7t h and 8th
grade boys basketball team practice, I will write at water breaks or
when one of them says something so humorous I cannot wait until I get
home to write it down. Lastly, when I am stuck in traffic or at the
airport when I go to spend holidays with my sisters who live in West
Palm Beach, I will write.
To borrow the writing/rhyming style of a very famous author, the one
and only Dr. Suess (yes I read him-I have four beautiful grandchildren
that I read to on occasion): I will write in the morning. I will write
at night. I will write when its dark. I will write when its light. I
will write in the house. I will write in the car. I will write the
sublime. I will write the bizarre. I will write when I'm sad. I will
write when I'm blue. So please choose my submission so that I can
write for a living until I am ninety-two.
Eva M. Lemeh -
emlemeh@comcast.net |
High Hope for the Freelance Writer