Can't Help It

As she lay in bed half awake this morning, Fio contemplated her literary career. It started with a four-line rhyme Mrs. Rider assigned the class to write in the third grade.  All Fio can remember of her offering is one line, "feathered Vs across the sky," which was her description of a bird migration. Then, of course, there was Baylor Children's Theater, which introduced her to scripts and drama.

In junior high, she wrote more poetry, mainly adolescent angst, and discovered comedy. That was also when, inspired by her mother's collection of Book-of-the-Month romances, she wrote the first chapter of a novel (which disappeared when Mother went through her desk drawer).

In high school, Fio penned playlets for presentation by the Latin club and the English literary club, wrote mounds of poetry, and ventured into short stories.   She also represented her school in ready-writing contests and edited the school Latin publication one year and the state publication the next.

Fiorella continued writing poetry, short stories, and essays through her undergraduate years, then added a romance novel and a dissertation to her repertoire when she was in graduate school.

And here she is now with two published books under her belt, a blog overflowing with mini-essays, about twenty short stories hanging around that she wants to re-edit, Lord knows how many poems scattered about, and more to come.

The girl can't help it.

Reflections of a Writer

Fiction is fictional.  Eloquence abounds--characters never stutter, repeat themselves, or are at a loss for the right word unless it suits the plot. No unnecessary characters clog up the works. And everything in the story ultimately makes sense.
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Late at night, when Husband and Dog have gone to bed, is when Fio prowls around Amazon, peeping at first chapters of other authors' books, trying to figure out how many they've sold, and deciding she is an absolute failure.
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Fio plowed through her first eight chapters yesterday, nipping and tucking and adjusting and un-adjusting, trying to make sure the story worked.  Today she'll go through eight more chapters, but more slowly because the writing gets rougher as she goes on.  Then there are the ten thousand words she has yet to write before March 1.

Born and bred Lutheran, Fiorella doesn't talk about God much, but she does think about him/her/it a lot.  Like right now, when she has the possibility of a wonderful new career in front of her.  But this rosy future of doing wants she wants to do, writing romances that give women templates of hope, would never have been possible if she hadn't been bounced out of her last job.

Hearing that she wasn't wanted around the English department anymore was quite a shock to Fio.  She'd never been dismissed from a teaching position before.  In fact, her department chairs usually valued her.  And Fio's students gave her rave reviews--well, at least after her first couple years, when she got her head straight and her feet on the ground.

Oops, she did lose her first teaching job, at UT, but so did every other "lecturer," and she was one of the last to go.  But that wasn't personal.

This last time  it was personal.  Her sin?  Through the years,  Fio had put a great deal of thought into why she was teaching, what she was teaching, and how to teach it effectively, with the result that she was an unconventional teacher.  (Enter, Jack Black.)

Anyway, Fio was not only shocked, but heartbroken when she was dismissed--because what she liked best about teaching was the students.  However being kicked out of her cozy office cleared the way for her to write full-time, or at least as full-time as one can while coping with house, husband, dog, and all the accouterments of life. And now, five years later, she realizes getting the axe was a blessing.

Thank you, God.