Chapter Twenty

By Keith N Fisher

It’s been a busy week. I’m sure you could say the same, but I’ve lost track of what day it is. Well, I know it’s Saturday because Gaynell posted yesterday. I worked nine hours last night at the place where I began my convenience store career. It was like walking down the halls of my Jr. High School as an adult.

On Thursday, we cooked for the faculty and staff of Foothill Elementary. I haven’t cooked in Dutch ovens for that many people in a year and I had to remember how to make some things.

On Wednesday night, I had the ladies from my critique group over. I had to load the Dutch oven stuff into the truck and they figured it would be best to have critique at my house. I read chapter twenty from Star Crossed. It has been a while since I’d seen this chapter and there was a brief moment when I got lost.

After the ladies left, I sat there thinking about all the projects I have finished. Star Crossed is waiting for critique, but The Hillside is at the publisher’s, The sequel to The Hillside is waiting until I know the status of the Hillside. Currently, I’m writing Shadow Boxing, and looking into resurrecting some old manuscripts.

While reading one of them, I realized how much my writing had changed. Yes, I’m a better writer now, mostly because of the aforementioned ladies, but I also write differently. Like working in the old store, walking through the pages of Eternal Tapestries was familiar, but intimidating. Reading chapter twenty brought me back to my state of mind while writing it. Cooking, although the threat of screwing up was intimidating, It’s a skill that will always come back to serve me.

Writing well, is a skill that cannot be learned. We must continue to improve or die trying. The editor in all of us balks at something that doesn’t sound right. If we wrote it, we cringe and fix it according to our current skill level. We read other writer’s work and glean tricks and skills from them. I read chapter twenty and noticed a few places that needed fixing.

May we never think we are the best writer we could be. Good luck with your writing---see you next week.