This is the story of an idea, a dream that just won’t die. Thirty years ago I signed up for my first writing class at a local college: Writing for the Children’s Market. Amidst a small group of writers who elected chose contemporary fiction as their genre, I knew that the story I wanted to tell was inspired by a 19th-century social activist, Lucretia Mott. Her birthplace is a cedar-shingled house only a block away from my own childhood home on Nantucket Island. I had no idea how to write a short novel nor how to do so within the time constraints of a semester. Research materials took me back to island life in the early-to-mid-1800s. The encouraging guidance of the instructor, supplemented by practical advice in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, helped me to complete a first draft of a middle-grade chapter book. But that was thirty years ago. What’s happened since then?
Pen and colored pencil.
There have been years of starts and stops with rewrites and edits, speed bumps in the research, and way too much time spent procrastinating, avoiding, giving in to self-doubt. Early on I made a couple of submissions, received a “positive” rejection from a big-name publisher, and enjoyed sharing the rough draft with a class of enthusiastic 4th grade test readers. I tried being accountable to myself by participating in a writing group. And yet, the story lingered in draft form, not forgotten, exactly, but not a priority either.
Out of the blue I received an email from a friend-of-a-friend with a new business teaching creatives “productivity know-how.” She was looking for writers who might be interested in learning how to approach their work differently. Suddenly I felt a twinge of hope for my unfinished Nantucket story. And now, finally, I have a “plan for done,” as we say in the Goodjelly program, and I am more optimistic than ever about moving this passion project out of the confines of my computer and into the world. I am as excited about the process of getting done as I am with the project itself.
I’d love to hear about your passion projects that are waiting in the wings, hoping for a finish.