My daughter recently posted this on Facebook:  

Dolly, I did a brave thing. During the pandemic, I started painting. That wasn’t brave, because nobody was looking over my shoulder pointing out my mistakes (the paintings did that!) But I really wanted to contribute something to the Pulpwood Queen Book Club’s silent auction for the Pat Conroy Literary Center. So here’s the brave thing—I did a “Low Country” watercolor and gave it to the silent auction.

It started out very ugly. (A good lesson for the drafts of our novels.) I was thinking that I might have to just throw it away and start over, but I decided I was having fun and just kept going. (Another lesson for writing.)

When I paint, I am often drawn to go “visit” the project while passing the studio (library/book storage/printer/extra-closet room).  As a painting dries, the colors lighten and the perspective changes. One night, I made my normal stumble to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Drawn to the studio on the way back to bed, I looked at the work in progress in the dim light of the hall nightlight and insanely decided the color of the water wasn’t right. 

You have to understand, I am fortunate to find my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night (and the morning, for that matter.) Not bothering to sit, get my glasses, or turn on decent light, I grabbed a brush and started “fixing” it. 

The next morning, I braced myself to look at what I had done, certain it would be a disaster.

Amazingly, it looked okay.

When the painting was finished, I was happy with it. Then I panicked, realizing to meet the deadline, I  had to send a photo in to the auction. (A familiar panic, as it happens with every manuscript when I hit “send” to the editor.) I stalled as long as I could and then, with great trepidation I sent it. 

It was received kindly. But how else would polite people react? We praise a child’s art efforts no matter how primitive and stick it proudly to the refrigerator. The few friends, sister, and hubby with whom I had shared my attempts had been encouraging. But this was different. People who don’t know me were going to be looking at this, and I doubted they would want to pay to stick it on their refrigerator.

I berated myself:  You’re a writer, not a painter.  What were you thinking?

The auction was for a good cause and was open to the public, so I did my duty and posted it on Facebook with an invitation to the auction. I told myself the worst thing that could happen was that no one would bid on it and no harm would be done. I’d just go back in the artist closet and continue painting just because I loved doing it.

The response on Facebook was immediate: 

To say I was blown away by the warm and excited comments is an understatement. In spite of the fact that I am a Writer (took a long time and several books published to own that word), it slowly bloomed in me that perhaps I could be an Artist too. Tears repeatedly came to my eyes that so many people thought what I had created was beautiful. Some of them were “real” artists. At that point, it really would not have mattered if no one bid on it.

However, they did. In fact, there was a bidding war! The executive director of the Center said he “thought there was going to be a bloodbath over it.” It received the highest bid of any item (and there were great things there).

When you finish a book, there is a certain sadness, a letting go, a goodby to the characters you have lived with for months, sometimes years. Tomorrow, I will put my little painting in a box and send it away to a stranger who lives on the other side of the country. I am happy/sad. 

I wonder if all joy has an element of sadness. The joy of seeing a child grow up and go off into the world mixes with the sadness of losing something precious. The joy of accomplishing a goal mixes with the sadness of having accomplished it. The joy and sadness of creating . . . and finishing. 

Many wise people have said this better: It is not the destination that brings us happiness, but the journey. 

Speaking of which, I think I will finish this blog and go start another painting . . . .

T.K.Thorne is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her curiosity and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com.  
 
  

Hope you had a great day with those you love, celebrating all the things you are thankful for. I am grateful for many things, family and friends in particular. But this year I am also thankful to have a new member of our family.

This is Nicki-Jones in February of this year (2021) when she arrived from a “kill lot” (next step, dog food in Mexico) in Louisiana to a quarantine pasture. She was lame and had a large wicked scar on the front of her left back leg and a patterned scarring on the back of the other leg that makes me think she got tangle in barbed wire at some point. The circular sticker on her withers was her lot #. She had a brand under her mane from the track, so I was able to confirm that she was a 16 year-old Standardbred. She was sweet, but had no idea what a treat was or even that eating out of a human hand was a possibility, which speaks to her former life as a work horse—pulling a sulky (a one-person cart) on a pacer race track and then with the Amish, where I assume she pulled a cart or wagon. I don’t know how long she had been at the kill lot, but they don’t keep them long because feeding her is an expense.

We took her in with another mare to give our gelding a companion and her a safe place to grow older and get loved on. Never thought I would be riding her! But she put on weight and gloss and healed up and definitely knows what a treat is now! Her coat even changed from brown to black this summer.

This is the first time I’ve been on her. Wasn’t sure what she would do, as I don’t know if she’s ever had anyone on her back, only pulled things. She caught on quickly, though, and I was really happy on this beautiful day to be in the saddle! It’s been a long time for the old lady on the top. Not sure Nicki-Jones felt the same way, but hoping we have some adventures ahead of us on the trails and lots of years to get to know each other and to be thankful for.

  T.K. is a retired police captain who writes Books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her. 

The world fell apart in March 2020. I was at a writers conference in California on the opposite side of the country from home (Alabama). One day after the start of the conference, I flew home. Two people in the airport wore masks. The rest of us tried to follow the advice “don’t touch your face.”  My nose has never itched so much.

Over the year, my grandson was born  . . . without me. Another daughter had to spend months in the hospital with her dying father . . . without me. Many people suffered much worse. So far, I have not lost any family. Actually, I’m am very close to the oldest in what’s left of my family. In the past year, I have been inside exactly one public place. How bizarre.

My mind has done some kind of trick where I can now see the death numbers posted on the side of the T.V. without feeling like I can’t breathe. That’s a good thing, right?  Maybe not. I try to not to watch the tributes to individuals because then I can’t breathe again.

Where lay the path of sanity? The muse deserted me.  I could not put pen to paper except to edit and to write this blog. Fortunately, I had a lot of material to edit, but the more days that have turned into weeks and month, the drier the well of creativity seemed. I had finished my police-witch trilogy (book two, House of Stone) and the eight-year nonfiction project (Behind the Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies, and Unsung White Allies of Birmingham’s Civil Rights Days). I finished a rewrite of an old manuscript and had no idea where to go next. I felt aimless, adrift.  Everything had a surreal quality.

The first thing I did that gave me a little peace was plucking debris and tiny plants from the green moss on the brick walk from the driveway to the front door.  It took hours; its only purpose was to create a little temporary beauty, but doing it calmed something inside me.

Then I took up the WW, the war on wisteria, a vine that had eaten half my back yard and uprooted several trees. This took months of back-breaking work.  Wisteria sends vines out underground that pop up yards away, making nodes along the way that each grow deep roots straight down. You can pull up one section, but any piece that survives can and will repopulate. I learned to know and love a tool called a mattock. Some days I could only do a tiny amount. But the harder I worked and the more exhausted I was, the better I slept and breathed. But I don’t recommend this as a therapy. Never plant wisteria, at least not the Chinese or Japanese variety.

The Wisteria War lasted through the summer and into fall. I decided to let the back yard become a wildflower garden (except for wisteria) and planted some old seeds that had been sitting out in my garage.  We’ll see if they germinate.

One thing I really missed was my twice-weekly martial arts class. Sometime in November, I decided to learn tai chi, which is practiced solo. You have probably seen old people doing it in a park. I learned it from Youtube videos, and whenever I felt trapped or anxious, I went through the movements. I did it three or four times a day, and it focused me on the present.

Over the winter, I lost my mind and adopted two rescue horses off the track, a Thoroughbred and a Standardbred—Foxy and Nickie Jones. I bought Foxy sight unseen from a Facebook picture at a “kill pen” in Louisiana. Her next step would have been dog food (in Mexico). She is a beautiful bay, although we’ve been working on a skin infection that even affected an eyelid. It’s all getting better. Nickie Jones was an older lady who traveled with her but when she arrived in Alabama, her purchaser backed off because she was injured and malnourished. So, we took her too. Preparation for their arrival took weeks of cleaning out the old barn and working on the overgrown arena and round pen.  Focusing on preparing for them and taking care of them has occupied me and my husband for several weeks now. But I am smitten!

Then a good friend introduced me to a form of art called Zentangle. It is done on little 3×3 inch pieces of stock paper—tiny art. I played with it and decided to add colors. Because it is so small, it is not intimidating like a big canvas would be. I’ve never done any “art thing” beyond doodling, but I’ve always wanted to.  They may not be great masterpieces, but the world fades away when I am working on one.

But still fresh words eluded me. No stories pushing to be born.

Then a friend I never met at that writer’s conference in California (we were supposed to be on a Law Enforcement panel together) emailed me and asked if I were interested in submitting a short story to an editor in Australia who is putting together a crime anthology featuring law enforcement authors and wanted some submissions from women. I am both of those things—an author and a cop, a retired one anyway, a short, gray-haired old lady. I agreed to submit a story. The catch is I had to write it. I had to create it. I told myself—this is like the tiny art. It’s a short story, not a novel. Even so, I was totally blank. But I promised, so I had to do it. One word at a time.

I was delighted and surprised that the words came. It’s about a short, gray-haired old lady who is an ex-cop, a martial artist, and a horse woman who witnesses a murder. I’ve sent it off. ***Maybe I’ll do another short story or maybe I have found a character who could support something longer?  

I hope this helps you find your way through.

***My short story, “The Old Lady” is now in two anthologies: To Serve, Protect, and Write and Work in Progress.

T.K. is a retired police captain who writes books, which, like this blog, go wherever her interest and imagination take her.  More at TKThorne.com