The Best One Ever

I'm on the last few chapters of my current work-in-progress, and the emotions I'm experiencing are strange. It is a little like the way I felt before one of our children got married or before the next grandchild was born. But there is also a tinge of the exhaustion that comes from remodeling a house or returning from long trip. I find myself avoiding the writing desk somedays, because I'm not quite ready to let these characters go. And every hour of writing brings their story closer to an end.

Some of them will reappear, of course, in other books already semi-plotted in my drawer. But others have fulfilled their destiny and will never return again to any of my printed pages. If you aren't a writer, everything I just said will sound irrational and possibly even demented. But, if you are a writer, or a reader, I'm sure I've made perfect sense.

It is always a little hard for me to make transitions in real life, too. I tend to be nostalgic and to look back on other seasons of life, remembering only the good parts, and longing just a little for them to return. My mother has set a grand example, though, of seizing every season of life and calling it The Best. She started with Christmas trees when we were little. No matter how lopsided or scraggly the fir tree might be, she always stood back once the lights were on and declared, "It is the prettiest one we've ever had."

And so I'm determined to face life that way. Today, Thirty Days to Glory is the best book I've ever written. Tomorrow...