8-22-13 RMB Writing

8-22-13 RMB Writing

Dear Rita Mae Brown,

Who encouraged you to write or was the need to do so only fueled by your own will? Was it a natural transition, to move from marching to allowing your words to march on? They travel beyond the ground of any pavement you could trek into infinite lives and into the future.

Daniel Reveles, an author who is also an exquisite story teller, once told me “Write every day.” That was his advice to me. He was serious and sincere. His stories tell of magic and life and the magic in life. He sees the importance of words, the value of storytelling; it’s effect on our world, to our humanity.

What would we be without our authors and the stories they have shared?

We struggle so, even with their words. They enlighten us with insight, passion and compassion, what ifs and heaven forbids, and yet we must still test the boundaries until something breaks, until souls shatter, people die and our earth suffers.

Your Rubyfruit Jungle gave some hope, kept some souls from shattering. And since then, your presence in book after book has lent comfort to untold numbers.

When I imagined writing; held the thought of it in my heart; the dream of placing word after word that would somehow in some way make a difference, I didn’t know what essence the words would contain. Or even if they would be fact or fiction?

I never would have considered writing a blog of Dear Rita Mae Brown letters. But then I hadn’t read about you, nor your stories when the desire to write took hold of the child I was. Blogs did not exist then.  

Now, as I send America, all 60,888 words of it, to the editor and advance readers, I am curious where this will lead. It’s a simple love story, but it has touched the few that have started reading it. These RMB letters, they have struck a chord with some. Are these people just entertaining me and my dream to write…or am I writing?

Part of my fascination with the craft is that one never knows where the words will lead when they take flight, who they will reach and what affect they might have when they land there. 

Bon voyage,

Loraine