Reflections and Dear R.J.

In the early 1980s, not long after I self-published the remedial reading workbook I had developed to help me tutor grade-school students, my sweet father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. My family and I traveled the rocky road with him for 18 months, until he passed away in 1984. For me, the creativity that had been blossoming seemed to fade away. I lost interest in tutoring and stopped taking piano lessons. My creative outlets seemed irrelevant. Instead, I dove into helping my husband build his coffee roasting company. I put my energies and organizational skills into developing and maintaining the behind-the-scenes infrastructures, while my husband built the clientele and sold the products.

Almost twenty years later, I decided to resurrect the characters from my workbook. I looked back again at when I had put them to rest. The timing all had to do with my dad. My sadness over his passing had sucked the inspiration right out of me. But that wasn't fair to my characters, with whom I definitely had unfinished business. It occurred to me that perhaps I could revive these creatures and honor my dad's spirit in the process. Perhaps he could be the person who discovered them, living in their unique world. How would that work? Why, he could find them as he traveled up to Heaven, of course! He was a wonderful, everyday family man who had served bravely in Guadalcanal, Luzon and elsewhere during WWII. What if he became an adventurous soul who decided he'd like to detour over the South Pacific on his way to Heaven, to see the area one more time under peaceful conditions? What if he discovered this unique world in the process?

I thought it could work, but I now realized I needed to write a preface to this grand project of mine. I needed a story that introduced this unexpected new world to the readers, gave my dad a place in it, established his knowledge of the characters' tales and delivered the tales to those of us here on Earth. Never in a million years did I suspect that this creative journey would take me in such a direction.

Pause #2! Write the preface. My dad's name was Robert Joseph. His character became R.J. The title became R.J.'s Story. The in-between world became Heaven's Wait.

Writing--What Did I Know?

I had never written anything that hadn't needed major revision. My teachers in school always told me that I was good at formulating interesting ideas, but not very good at expressing them. I needed help in both verbal and written arenas. But I had to give writing a shot anyway, since it was a major part of my grand vision. The ideas that floated around in my mind nagged at me to be released and often kept me awake at night. There had to be a reason I was heading down this path. All I could do was follow the inspiration. So I began writing the original tales.

I decided to resurrect some animated characters I had created as part of a remedial reading workbook I developed while I was raising my boys. At the time, I used the program to tutor remedial readers from my home. When I started writing the tales, however, I was no longer interested in the mechanics of the reading program. I wanted to give my quirky, otherworldly characters a new life within the realm of this new project.

With no more than a list of life-lesson concepts in hand, I wrote the first couple of tales. I purposely kept the language simple so that anyone, young or old alike, could read my work. There was no outline, and no plan as to how my ideas would all come together. I quickly realized there was much more to this than simply sitting down and writing fictional tales. I wasn't going to get very far in writing about my characters until I knew more about them. They needed distinctive personalities, looks, families, and reasons for behaving as they did.

Pause the process (Pause #1) and enter MS Access. I began building background character data: names, ages, heights, relations, attributes, jobs, generations and more. The database gave me a place to record all the little tidbits of character information I needed to remember as time progressed. My main character, for example, became a fourth-generation teenage male with a father, a grandfather and a great-grandfather, all of whom played parts in the developing stories. I built a form that gave me a handy page for each character as he or she entered the picture.

I also needed to know the backdrop for my tales. These characters were oddball beings that were certainly not human, although human-like, and so didn't fit into a typical earthly setting. It was great fun trying to solve this problem, because I let my imagination run free to see where it might take me. It became obvious that I needed to create another world somewhere out there for the creatures to inhabit. That was fine; I could do that. But then what? How would those of us on Earth know that this other world existed? Things were getting more complicated by the minute!

The answer came to me after some sentimental reflections.

Before Heaven's Wait

And so my blog officially begins. Welcome to my journey!

Almost from the time I first learned about computers, database design and the Internet, my creative wheels started turning. My kids were still young, but I was getting old enough to think that, for their sake, I might want to preserve some of the little bits of wisdom I was accumulating as I worked my way through life's many processes. Seeing that such preservation was destined to be technology-based, I wondered if I could design some kind of application that would express these tidbits in a fun, entertaining way. My vision was that of creating something in a multimedia format that could be enjoyed by future generations of my family (for starters) as a kind of personal legacy, so they could learn some things about me they may not otherwise have known.

My overall plan was wishy-washy, to say the least, and much grander than my knowledge of the programs that would bring my ideas to life. Actually, I'm not sure if the programs back then would have been able to accommodate me anyway. I envisioned a collection of tales that not only imparted a little wisdom but that also entertained with illustrations, sounds and fun things to do. Little did I know how ambitious my ideas were!

I knew I had to start by delving into the rapidly growing world of technology. I had already become fairly proficient at database design with MS Access (after fumbling through a handful of lengthy seminars, where I was probably the only participant who wasn't a computer programmer). While other family members brought relaxing reading materials on vacations, I lugged my 1,200-page Access, Photoshop, Freehand, Illustrator, FrontPage and Dreamweaver manuals around with me. I kept telling myself that somewhere down the line, tools such as these would reveal their value beyond that of tracking brewing equipment or taking product photos for our family's coffee roasting company. My inner geek, engineer, artist and who-knows-what-else were beginning to make their presence known.

The greater picture lingered in my mind, and I moved along, one amateur step at a time.

Yes, I Still Plan to Blog

Hello there! I know it's been months since I posted my first blog. Just so you know, I haven’t abandoned my intention to share my creative journeys. Behind the scenes and when time has allowed, I’ve been working hard on a massive project about a fantasy world of my own creation, a place called Heaven's Wait. The project includes stories, illustrations, music, activities and more. I look forward to releasing all the crazy ideas that have been living in my head, but I need a little more time before I bring my vision to the public.

Heaven's Wait has consumed my creative energies for the past several years. As a person who basically has no expertise in anything, I've had to research many different creative arenas to get to this point. Now that I’ve finally secured a trademark for Heaven's Wait, I feel I can at least reveal the name of the world that has captured my imagination.

The first peek at Heaven's Wait will come in the form of a website, which I've had great fun developing. One of my sons needs to do some behind-the-scenes technical work before the site is ready to launch, but it is coming along nicely. The first major story about Heaven's Wait has, I hope, reached its final form, but I have yet to determine the best publishing path for the story. The publishing world is an ever-changing beast these days, with the huge presence of technology in its face. My stories come with unusual extras in the form of accompanying illustrations, music and activities, which, for me, are necessary elements of my overall vision. I need to find a publishing route that can accommodate that vision.

In the meantime, I am working on a collection of blogs that chronicle the path I've traveled as I've developed the world of Heaven's Wait. Once the Heaven's Wait website is ready to launch, I'll post several introductory entries and gradually catch readers up to where I am today with this project. At that point, maybe I'll be an official blogger!?!

I hope to post again soon.

Okay! I'll Try Blogging!

And so my blog begins. I've often wondered how people find subjects to talk about in a blog and why those topics might be of interest to others. As I learn more and more about people by peering through the windows of the online world, it seems that allowing others to see our humanness is what is most attractive. Our nature as individuals is to seek connections to people and subjects that strike a deep chord with who we are and what we most love.

It makes sense. We all have varying interests, whether we have identified them or not. I finally realized how much I love creative processes. But I didn't fully realize I needed to pursue that love until I was probably 50. Those processes keep me entranced and take me to a zone where my imagination runs free and time evaporates. While some people may question my sanity, considering some of the ideas I come up with, I really don't care. I can do as I please with my ideas. They don't need others' approval, and don't even need to be marketed; they simply need to be unleashed from my head. Whatever happens after that is a bonus. I think we owe it to the world to get our ideas "out there", just in case something beneficial emerges.

Creative journeys intrigue me...the way golf intrigues my husband, world issues intrigue Diane Sawyer, and poetry intrigues Maya Angelou. And now there are so many fabulous ways to share whatever inspires any of us. So I'll try blogging about my creative journeys, and perhaps the things I write about will be meaningful to someone.