Sunday, December 23, 2012

The Mad Scientist

Pleasant Day Travellers!

That's my new name for you, although it's hardly a 'new' name by now, it still works beautifully.  Life is full of journeys, some more specific than others, and the knowledge that you are choosing to travel along with me is extremely wonderful.

I wish my mom was still alive to come along on this trip, it is one she would have loved; it's the journey she prepared me for since birth.  I am Jean's daughter, with all the wondrous and miserable things that she gave me; no matter where I go in life, I can never stray very far from that fact.  I don't want to stray far because Jean was a rare and special lady, but she was also tragic because Mom never truly embraced her eccentricities.  She fought against them her whole life, always trying so hard to be more mainstream, more normal, and that fight broke her on the inside.

Jean blamed herself for not being more like them, she saw the normal coming so easily to everyone else but not to her and self destructed quietly over a long period of time.  My deepest regret is that I could not save her, that I didn't know then what I know now and I wish I could have given her some peace.

It is too late for that, but I'm a mother too, so I know exactly what she would have wanted for me. Jean wanted better for me than she got but, more importantly, she wanted me to get if for myself, to do it my way and on my own terms.  My mother saw her crazy in me and did not try to squash it like her mother did, she encouraged it, fostered it, defended it and cried about it occasionally.

But the crazy was her gift to me, to all of her children, and there is no finer gift available.  Jean gave me the very best of herself and I am running with it, running with scissors quite possibly, but I that won't slow me down any.

So, when I posted last week about my changing my word, I was quite serious.  My theory is that changing the vocabulary I use about The Last Prospector will affect the way I present myself and the book to the world.  Until recently, I have not been my typical over-the-top, zealous self about promoting my writing and this is because I succumbed to self-doubt.

No more, no more.  The grand experiment is working, it started working the very moment I changed from self published to scratch, the real Cairn came back.  No more agonizing and wondering if people will like The Last Prospector, it is one of the tastiest morsels I have ever created and that is truly saying something.

In fact, it is so good that I might put a copy of the book on covered glass cake plate in the kitchen where Clyde's endless supply of homemade cookies usually live.  That is precisely the kind of eccentricity Jean would have loved.


No comments:

Post a Comment