Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: The Writer's Life (05/13/10)
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TITLE: The Writer in Me | Previous Challenge Entry
By D.A. Urnosky
05/18/10 -
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I thought of my aunt who went to see her priest after the birth of her downs-syndrome baby. He told her that she must be a remarkable woman that God would trust her with the care of one of his special children. I took my turns at feeding, burping, bathing and changing diapers, but I never felt that qualified me for remarkable status. My wife is the saint in our family.
Dealing with two special needs boys on a daily basis can be taxing. There are no manuals or experts to tell you what to do. It is all learn as you go. Each day brings a new challenge to conquer or the same challenge to conquer again. Patience is tried and sometimes loses the battle. Most days I feel overwhelmed with responsibility and frustrated with the lack of answers. My sons are now 13 and 9. I love them with all my heart and wouldn’t trade them for ‘normal’ models under any circumstance. Normality, at best, is vague. But somewhere along the way, I traded myself.
I switched jobs and moved my family to another state. I thought the change would help fulfill the emptiness I felt inside. It didn’t. Things actually worsened. The support system disappeared with the people we left behind. The stress level reached new heights.
And that is when I began to write.
After the boys were asleep and my wife was at class, I would slip into my own world where I controlled every aspect of life. I wrote about what I knew best, my childhood, and incorporated two of my favorite pastimes, reading suspense novels and watching religious genre movies.
All the characters I knew personally. Some of the storyline occurred in an unembellished form. Places I have lived and visited were included. I enjoyed my excursions back into the 1960’s. The longer I wrote, the more I realized how peaceful I felt and the void slowly disappeared. My wife was my sounding board and my stool pigeon. I could make her very angry when I would sneak up on her and rip open the shower curtain to write down the expression on her face, her body movement and the sound of her scream, ala Psycho.
At times, I felt as if God moved my fingers across the keyboard. Pieces of the jigsaw puzzle I created fell into place perfectly. After two years of writing and re-writing, I had completed a book. The first project of this magnitude I attempted and finished. I was overcome with emotion and the sense of accomplishment.
With encouragement, I had my book published by a small publishing company. I wanted to share with others the enjoyment I had in writing the book hoping that they would enjoy reading the novel as well. I never expected the novel to be a bestseller or read by a wide audience. I still get a tingle down my back when I look at the cover and see my name on the bottom knowing that it was my imagination that created this story.
A few months after publication, I joined FaithWriters, not only to work on my skills but to communicate with people like me…and especially to write.
Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. Phillipians 4:11 (NLT)
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This was openly touching as well. Good Job!
I can relate to the "jigsaw puzzle feeling." Probably all Christian writers can feel it when they rely on Him to give them what they need to write. How He flows the story through our fingertips and it feels as if it's no longer us writing . . . and it probably isn't. ;)
Congrats on your book! You have a great writing style. Hope you have many more bestsellers.