Calling Them Up by Liz Flaherty

I write a lot about age. About change. About disappointment. They're unavoidable things, aren't they? No matter how carefully you color your hair, the underneath "natural" color is going to change. No matter how coyly you hide your age, it's still your age. No matter how many good and fun and exciting things happen in your life, there are still the others, too. The disappointments and heartbreaks and will-I-survive? things.

Everything in that first paragraph is what makes writing in "later years" (gag--I hate that term!) so much fun. And so successful, although maybe not financially. Because when it comes to writing the emotion and the thinking part of our characters, it's pretty easy--we've been there and done that. And even if it's been 40 years or so since you actually felt the experience you're writing about, you can just rip open that scarred place on your heart and call it right back up.

Sounds painful, doesn't it? And sometimes it is. Depending on the depth of the angst. It also allows you to remember how strong you are, the positive changes made to you by what may have been a definite negative, and to remember how rich life is because of all the parts there are in it. If it were a puzzle, it would be one of those 1000-piece ones where 700 of the pieces are of the sky. Frustrating and exhausting and...oh, man, exhilarating.

But, oh, the other part! Calling up things that were so much fun, that added brightness and highlights to the natural colors of things--I can't find words to describe how satisfying that is. While age denies you remembering what you went into the kitchen for, it gives you videos from the past in living color. Sounds of voices, beloved scents, and memories of touch are such great gifts, and we can mine them all to write about.

Nan and I were talking the other day about writing Christmas stories in July and I said the words in the meme above. She said, "You need to use that," so I put them on a sticky note and they've sat there on my screen ever since. Someday, in some book, they'll show up, and I'll remember sitting here while the sun came up that morning and talking and what a treasure friendship is. 

And how it felt being in my grandma's house on Christmas afternoon...

~*~

Something New. Their lives are planned out...until they're not! Are Hass and Zeke in love or just stuck in a habit?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B091WQGHF1 or https://books2read.com/u/4DRKqe