Laptops and lattés

Last Saturday was the day!  My Chapter 1, Saturday June 13, was critiqued.  I meant to post this blog the next day, but that meeting sparked so many ideas, that I’ve been working feverishly all week.  I'm getting Chapter 2 down on paper, but haven’t had a spare neuron to devote to finishing this post (which I began last Saturday).  I decided to stop re-working Chapter 1 so I could let the critique and all the thoughts it created settle into some kind of order.

The Boulder Writers Meetup Group meets in the back room at The Cup on Pearl Street in Boulder every Saturday morning.  The Cup is a hopping place where the cognescenti of Boulder gather with their laptops, lattés and introspective glances to no one in particular.

There were about ten of us and mine was second of the two pieces that were presented.  It worked for me; definitely! I loved hearing the impressions people had of my writing, and what worked and what didn’t work about the chapter.  What was very meaningful to me was how people related to the characters, what they thought of them and how they interpreted their personalities and their relationships to each other.  I was pleased that some people got what I was trying to convey and connected some of the symbolic elements.  Without a doubt, the comments were valuable (whether they were positive or negative) and I will make use of them.  Thank you group!  

But, I was and still am quite overwhelmed.  

Out of the Darkness isn’t actually a story about a car accident; it could have been a story about a death, a diagnosis of cancer or the broken heart of a wife after 20 years of devotion to her husband which ends in him leaving her for a younger woman.

Out of the Darkness is about the events that occur after one single instant that changes the course of a life.  What are those instances that change us forever?  Those moments that are never anticipated and can’t be denied.  It’s about the hurdles the character faces in overcoming the ravages of her brain and body and the journey she takes to repair her life. 

It’s a bad-things-happen-to-good-people story.  It’s a something-goes-amiss story.  It’s a self-against-self story.  

In the Flemish morality play, Everyman (c. 1500), the character is representative of all of us--the human race. When Everyman is summoned by death, he discovers that his friends Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, and Goods will not go with him. It is Good Deeds, whom he previously neglected, who finally supports him and who offers to justify him before the throne of God.  

In literature and drama, the term "everyman" has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify, who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances. 

So, is Camryn an Everywoman? Is she an ordinary woman? Camryn is a divorced mother of two children; she’s back at school for an advanced degree, works full time, cleans the house, cooks dinners, does the laundry, makes Halloween costumes for the kids and bakes Christmas cookies each December.  She is summoned by death when she faces the extraordinary task of overcoming a brain injury and chronic pain.  

There are so many of us who suffer.  I ran across a website over the weekend To Write Love on her Arms

We’ve learned that two out of three people who struggle with depression never seek help, and that untreated depression is the leading cause of suicide.  In America alone, it’s estimated that 19 million people live with depression, and suicide is the third-leading cause of death among those 18-24 years old.

The good news is that depression is very treatable, that a very real hope exists in the face of these issues.  We’ve met people who are getting the help they need, sitting across from a counselor for the first time, stepping into treatment, or reaching out to a suicide hotline in a desperate moment.

There are those who suffer and are those who reach out.  Someone reached out to me.  His name is Clarence; it was my George Bailey moment.