The million dollar question: "Where do the ideas come from?"

In the last post, I mentioned the way the small town of Fryeburg changed the way they thought of me due to some poems being printed in a local paper.  Having grown up in a smaller town than Fryeburg, where I was always "Bob and Monique's youngest girl", I was thrilled at the thought that I was starting to develop my own tag separate from other people - especially since that tag wasn't something along the lines of "That Crazy Bag Lady" or some such moniker.  Unfortunately, not everyone was thrilled by my new identity.....

My mother-in-law, at the point that I met her, was already having a hard time getting around due to the ravages of Multiple Sclerosis.  For those not familiar with this disease, here is the description from the Multiple Sclerosis Society page:  "Multiple sclerosis (or MS) is a chronic, often disabling disease that attacks the central nervous system (CNS), which is made up of the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves."  She was fighting, but it was a losing battle, and she was understandably bitter about not being able to get out and do things on her own, like she used to be able to do.  By the time I was starting to get recognized for my poetry, she was bed ridden - and since she had never really had that "censor" button that makes people pause and think about how their words are going to affect other people before the words are out, she was usually very blunt about whatever she thought about the news she was hearing.

Judy was quite happy about me being "Judy Emmons' daughter-in-law" around town, so when she was talking to her friends, either when they were visiting in person or via the telephone, I suspect she was a little put out to have them forming an opinion of me that didn't involve what she thought about me.  I already knew from my husband and my sister-in-law that there were several things about me that she didn't approve of - so I really kind of blame myself for the following scene that happened between us....

Encouraged by the kind comments from the people I was meeting at the grocery store and along the streets, I had entered one of my poems into a poetry contest sponsored by The National Library of Poetry.  Expecting them to reject my piece, as it was a rather sad poem about the death of my father, I was thrilled when they wanted to print it in an anthology, "On the Threshold of a Dream" (1988), and, with my husband's encouragement, I ordered a copy of the book.  After a talk over the phone with my own mother, I went to visit my mother-in-law to tell her the "good news"....and was not at all prepared for her reaction.

Instead of acting happy for me and congratulating me as my own mother had done, Judy frowned and asked me a question:  "How much money are you making from this?"

When I admitted that I hadn't been in the top three prize winners, so I hadn't won any money, she rolled her eyes and sighed.  "You have a child to raise, so instead of wasting your time on this, you should be paying more attention to your son."  And then she said something that I considered a call to arms:  "You're never going to make money from writing!"

Stinging from her rejection of a hobby that kept me sane by allowing me an outlet for my pent up emotions, I became determined to find a way to make money for doing a writing project, so I started looking at magazines, which frequently offer a modest payment for very short stories for them to use as "fillers".  I found my magazine when I picked up a Playgirl magazine as a gag gift for a friend's birthday - and found that they offered $25 for a short piece to be used in their Fantasy Forum section.

Using characters based on my sister-in-law and her then boyfriend, but changing the descriptions so that my mother-in-law would recognize who I had used as the characters, but they wouldn't be recognized on the streets of town, I interviewed my "partners in crime" (the sis-in-law and her boyfriend, who were only too happy to help), typed up a few pages and sent it in.  The first effort was rejected because it "was not steamy enough".

Determined to turn up the steam, I sat back down with my sis-in-law, letting her read the rejected version and getting some truly good material for the rewrite.  She was particularly helpful at correcting my "Catholic upbringing" terms, as she called them, telling me that exotic dancers (which she had been for a brief time) didn't refer to their 6-inch tall shoes as "high heels", but rather they were "come-f$^k-me spikes".  The romantic angle of the first effort became a one night stand, and, when writing the second draft while my young son took his nap, I actually had to turn on a fan (despite it being a cold day outside) to cool off my burning cheeks from the blush I caused myself to have.  I knew I was successful when I brought the second draft to my sister-in-law, waited anxiously while she read it - and was rewarded by an evil grin that brought dancing lights into her eyes.  As she handed me back the manuscript, she playfully fanned herself and said "By George, I think you've got it!"

Sending off the second effort with a cover letter, I was back to the waiting game - and as I waited, the MS took an even greater toll on my mother-in-law.  When she got a cold, her body was having a harder and harder time fighting it off, and in January of 1989, she developed pneumonia.  Having been hauled into the hospital several times over the past few months, she refused to allow it to happen again, and she passed away peacefully at home.  In the midst of all of this, I forgot all about my short story - until the acceptance letter came a few days after my mother-in-law's funeral.  I was going to be paid for something I wrote!  It was going to appear in the Playgirl Fantasy Forum for the August 1989 issue!  But instead of being elated, I was in shock.  How could I proudly proclaim that I was a published short story writer when even I couldn't read the story without blushing??

I told my family anyway, and my mom proudly printed off a copy of it and posted it in the back room at her workplace to share it with her co-workers.  Every time I stopped in to visit her at work when we arrived in town for a visit earlier than expected, requiring me to get a key to get into her house to wait until she was finished, her co-workers would say "Oh, it's the WRITER!" - and laughed when I'd blush.

This story could have ended right there, but as Stephen King has pointed out, sometimes when you put your work away in a drawer and ignore it for a while, magic happens.  For the next blog, we'll go into how this little piece, meant only to prove to my mother-in-law that I could be paid for writing, turned into a novel......