. “She was fascinated with words. To her, words were things of beauty, each like a magical

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“She was fascinated with words. To her, words were things of beauty, each like a magical powder or potion that could be combined with other words to create powerful spells.” - Dean Koontz
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Dean totally gets me …
You may have noticed I have a small obsession with words. Like Dean already mentioned, when used properly, I consider them to be things of great beauty. Some people arrange flowers. Others can look at a room and see their vision appear like a fully-formed mirage. I can do neither of those things. What I CAN do is give my thoughts an appearance: texture and dimension, a soft complexion, a stiff back. I also find words to be like tools. Hammer and nail, words help me to pin down what EXACTLY it is that I’m feeling. That’s the real reason I adore them so. Before I began to write - that is, spend hours upon hours putting words down on paper, hoping to make some semblance of a novel - I used to feel clobbered by my feelings. Even suffocated at times. Unable to breathe until I could figure it out. It was like trying to see what was ahead while looking through a muddy windshield. I could sort of make it out, but not well enough to do anything constructive with it.
I didn’t even know I COULD write until one day my husband said, with all the formality of an Oscar Meyer hotdog, “You should write a book.” I looked at him, laughed-snorted something caustic, my defense mechanisms rising like hackles. But then I got really still and really quiet. A moment later I replied, “I SHOULD write a book.”
So I did.
I wrote a young adult contemporary fiction novel called “Awakening Foster Kelly.” And it only took FIVE YEARS. To be fair, some of that time was allotted to perfecting my tortured artist persona.
To this day that book is the most beautiful disaster I’ve ever made. 669 pages of WORDS. Many of them beautiful, most of them unnecessary. It makes a lovely doorstop, or in a pinch could be pitched over the side of a ship and used as an anchor.
Too many words, but it’s how I learned. To say what I need to say. To say it accurately, passionately, vulnerably.
Saying it briefly, well … clearly not my fortè.
So … all of this to say … I painted an apple.