The Writer Signs Books

The past Saturday, I enjoyed being the writer and celebrating the release of According to Carley Love by signing copies at a charming small bookstore.

It has been years since I did a book signing event. I’m grateful for supportive friends and family, and the generous owner of the charming Mobile Bookseller store of Mobile, Alabama, who welcomed me like royalty.

A dear friend, who has never read one of my books, is now reading According to Carley Love. She phoned me tonight to tell me that one of the things she is enjoying is recognizing some topics she and I have discussed, and how the book makes her remember back when I was caring for my mother in her last days. Another friend asked me, “Okay, is Carley Love you?”

The answer, of course, is that there is a lot of me in Carley Love, but the story is fiction. Made up out of ‘whole cloth’, to use the Southern term that Carley Love would use, and which has always delighted me. There is a lot of me in every one of my characters, but my heroines are always much better than I am. They tend to be, in many ways, who I wish I was–more courageous and daring, and witty, and wise, and funny. And they can always cook much better than I can.

I ran across this bit of wisdom by Madeleine L’Engle: “Fiction, in a less direct way, will teach me, teach me things I would never learn had I not opened myself to them in story. And often the events of my life and the events in whatever book I am writing are so inextricably intertwined that I cannot separate them. But I always learn from the writing, and it is usually something unexpected…” (from Walking on Water, Reflections on Faith and Art.)

More than one reviewer of the book has noted Carley Love’s trait of indecisiveness. I can on occasion be the same. When younger, making a decision was so terribly hard for me. Once, when attempting to decide whether or not to purchase a pair of sandals, I dithered so long and hard that my sister-in-law finally picked up the sandals and shoved them at me, saying, “Here, you’re getting them.”

Our society tends to value decisiveness, in the same way society believes being outgoing is a more valuable trait. I certainly admired decisive people, but over the years I’ve come to see that indecisiveness leaves room for questioning. It is an open mind considering.

And then one day I heard the wonderful writer Jack Bickham say, “I can never make up my mind. That’s why I’m a writer.”

Bingo! The light went off in my brain. Of course! I can see all sides of an argument, and a character. I can understand people. And I can write them.

Being indecisive is not a character defect. It is a way of looking at life with an open mind and heart. Give yourself room to not make up your mind.

Grace and peace,