STARTING OVER….

by Rosemary Lord

Happy New Year!

It’s time to come out from hiding under that duvet!

This winter is turning out to be tough on so many, with the freezing temperatures and endless rain across much of America and Europe. But I’m in California, where it’s still often sunny during winter, even when it feels to us as if it’s freezing.  My siblings in England ridicule me with our 66-degree “heatwave.” Hey! We’ve had several days of rain – and the ensuing power-cuts and floods. Los Angeles comes to a halt at the first sign of rain…. Enough already! I’m done with winter!

 

But I digress: Each January is a fresh start. Time to dust off our goals, our dreams, our great plans for life.  

As a teenager I had so many dreams and goals – and many of them I have accomplished. The fourteen-year-old me never questioned that I could not go from a quiet little town in England, far removed from the acting and showbiz worlds, to living in Hollywood, (where I knew no one and was totally ignorant of how things worked), to working as an actress and a writer in Hollywood movies. My dreams, my positive beliefs and my naivete fueled my journey.  I’m not saying it wasn’t very tough at times, frustrating and sometimes heartbreaking. It took a lot longer than I thought. But I was driven by my dreams and never gave up.  

 

Then a new chapter of my life opened up. My dreams and my goals changed.

Writing was my new focus. I wrote articles about Old Hollywood and Movie Stars from Hollywood’s Golden Era. I wrote about Hollywood history. But I never thought I would be smart enough or talented enough to be a novelist. I was and am still in awe of so many of the great novelists. How could I ever come close to that?

 

It was shortly after my first non-fiction book Los Angeles Then and Now was published and I was having lunch with fellow British-born writer Jacqueline Winspear. We’d both been honored by the Southern California Book Sellers Association. Jacqui had launched her first amazing Maisie Dobbs novel and I was chosen for my Los Angeles Then and Now. As we chatted about our current and future writing plans, she convinced me that I, too, could write a novel. Even a mystery novel. She explained how Maisie Dobbs came about and the basic method she used. Wow! She opened up a whole new world for me.

A new pathway. She showed me how to look at writing in a totally different way. I will be forever grateful. I subsequently joined Mystery Writers of America and then Sisters-in-Crime. I found a new family of writers.

 

But even along this writers’ journey, there comes a time when we have to step off into the unknown to get new results, to shake things up.

 

“This year will be different,” we often promise ourselves on New Year’s Day. But in order for it to be different, we have to do things differently. Maybe it’s a time to take a fresh approach, take another path. I’ve been toying with the idea for a children’s book – taking a break from intense historical research. Another writer friend is inspired to try her hand at poetry this year, after several successful noir thrillers. Perhaps a crack at a movie script?

 

New Year’s is a great time to plan a do-over. Change writing habits. Shift the energies around. The year ahead is filled with new opportunities, new hopes and wonderful blank pages for us writers to fill.

 

Perhaps go back to the simple way of doing things – without all the current programs available to us. I sometimes wonder whether our world of social media, immediate access to ‘google’ or ‘duckduckgo’ information is a blessing or a curse.

 

In days of yore, writers would be found in dusty libraries, surrounded by research books, furiously taking notes. That’s what the Agatha Christies of her day would have done. Jane Austen too. Mary Roberts Rhinehart didn’t use Instagram to tout her The Circular Staircase success. Edgar Alan Poe didn’t have a Facebook page. Charlotte Bronte didn’t Tweet. Raymond Chandler did okay without all that. Hmmm.

 

But today we have a choice to avail ourselves of those services. And we have Sisters-in-Crime, The Authors Guild and Mystery Writers of America to turn to. We have options.

Writers are storytellers. We’re the ‘wandering minstrels ‘of our time. Minstrels would wander from village to village, singing about the news around the countryside. Today we fictionize the local village stories and don’t have to travel from village to village to share them. We have a flourishing publishing world, movies, television, internet, podcasts and multi-media resources to spread the word. Or we can choose to keep it simple with a yellow pad, pencil and our imagination.

 

I love the excitement of the New Year options. A chance to start over.

What about you?