~ IWSG: EMPTY SEATS ~

It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post on the first Wednesday of every month. Every month, the organizers announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. Remember, the question is optional!!! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world! Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG, and the hashtag is #IWSG.

February 2 question – Is there someone who supported or influenced you that perhaps isn’t around anymore? Anyone, you miss?
I miss my parents. They were my biggest supporters, especially my mother. In the early days, as a writer in my teens, I used to edit my stories, then print out several copies, have them spiral bound, and give them to people. I had given my parents many copies over the years. Ma was my biggest fan, and she kept my handmade books on their bookshelf. Anyone who came over their threshold, be it neighbour, friend, or stranger, Ma would bring out one of my stories and read aloud to them. As a younger, more foolish person, I can remember feeling red-faced and embarrassed at having my early stories paraded in public. But after my parents died, I missed Ma’s earnest, innocent, unerring support more than words can say. It struck me that no one (apart from maybe paid professionals) was ever going to sell my stories every chance they got or with such fervour ever again.

I was very close to my parents and was the only one of four siblings to live at home* for long periods in adulthood. (*see, starving writer). When my parents retired, they shifted to live in a log cabin by the seaside for twenty years of bliss. I would travel down from the city to visit them for a three-day weekend every six weeks. Not once did Ma ever fail to ask how my writing was going. Even after the six mini-strokes that slightly addled her brain. She always asked about my stories and – wonderfully – would sit and listen to the answer with rapt attention. Ma genuinely wanted to know what I was writing. She would ask interesting questions and I loved to fill her in.

Every writer knows that the process of submitting work to publishers and competitions is soul-destroying. If I faltered in my self-belief and began to feel I couldn’t send out another manuscript to a publisher, Ma’s enthusiasm and unfailing belief in my ability would keep me going. She loved my stories and was utterly convinced that it was just a matter of time before someone turned them into bestsellers. Her strength kept me aligned due north.

About twenty years ago, I was unpublished and still entering stories into every competition and awards contest. I submitted the first manuscript in my future trilogy, The Chronicles of Aden Weaver, titled The Or’in of Tane, to an international “unpublished manuscript” competition. The first prize was the publication, physical copies, and worldwide distribution of the resulting ebook. It was a pretty awesome prize by anyone’s standards. The publisher would contact the shortlisted authors after they chose the final winner. Everyone else would hear bad news within a few days of submission. A month after the deadline passed, I still had not heard from them. I felt tentatively excited. Publisher silence meant my story still had a chance.
But then another month passed, and I still hadn’t heard. I finally emailed the publisher. I found out my story had arrived a day after the deadline. I realized I had made a simple mistake calculating the difference in time zones. Therefore, they had not even considered my manuscript. After all the years of rejections, to think I had potentially crossed the finish line, only to find out I’d failed again, was too much. I fell into a black hole of depression and stayed in a dark place for an entire week.
At the end of that week, the phone rang. I picked it up. “Hello?”
My mother’s voice. No preamble. She said, “The darkest hour comes before the dawn.”
And with those words offered as a lifeline, she pulled me out. I started to weep. While I bawled my eyes out, I could hear Ma saying positive, encouraging, uplifting things. Then I dried my eyes, and we talked. Later, when I got off the phone, I realized my perspective had shifted, and I could move on with my writing life. Ma always knew when to ride in on the white horse.

Both my parents were avid supporters.
When I finally went the Indie route and self-published The Or’in of Tane, it was September 2015. My mother had died in June of that year. She never got to be at my book launch. But my father was there. At the age of 82, he traveled all the way to the city to attend, and in the speeches, he stood up and started his piece with ‘I’m Dad.” He was proud, and I got to feel my parents’ faith in me was vindicated.
By the time I released the second and third books in the trilogy, my father had passed away, too. There were two empty chairs at the launch, which I allocated to my parents because they would have loved to be there. The dedication I gave them on the front page of The Or’in of Tane read, For my parents, who believed in me, no matter what.
I sure do miss them.
What about you. Is there someone who supported or influenced you that perhaps isn’t around anymore? Anyone, you miss?

Keep Writing!
Yvette Carol
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The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart. ~ Hellen Keller

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