I Wrote A Novel

At the beginning of this year, I wrote on this very blog that I planned to write a novel this year.  I started one and abandoned it, not quite ready for that story, or maybe the story was not ready for me.

I turned to a new story and went with it.  I feel like I finished this novel at least six times this year because it had so many drafts.  I've announced 'the end' far too many times.

But today was the most real of all the ends because, like I said, I wrote on this blog that I planned to write a novel this year.  I am very stubborn.  And it is the end of the year.

So I wrote it.  I'm grateful to those of you who have read it.  And I look forward to seeing what will happen to it, if anything at all.

And I hope to write another one next year.

Here are some words of it, so you believe me.

Happy New Year, my friends.

Adelaine sunk to the curb, let her hair tumble to her feet, let her chin fall into her knees.  She pictured Reagan caught in the long strands of grass poking up from the edge of beach.  Adelaine had never been afraid of the ocean, would go to it even in the pink of morning when the air was cold.  She would let the shells nibble at her feet until she felt the smooth sand beneath her, until the ground disappeared all together and she was floating, arms out, the sun at the fall of the earth, toes gripping the cool water. 

But Reagan always stayed behind, weaving the thick blades together until she had a crown of brown and gold.  Adelaine would leave the ocean, stand over her, dripping, and wonder out loud why she would not go with her, not even let the water to her knees.  “I can teach you, ya know,”  Adelaine told her.

            And Reagan wrapped the braid of grass around her wrist.  A bracelet that, when she let go, unraveled to the sand. “It just seems like it would be so easy to get swept away.”