The Greatest Thing ...

siDEADde, World-famous authoress of the World-famous Twilight fan-fiction Lunière (I'm not being indulgent in either claim, both are statements of fact), has started writing a new story, and with a vengeance ... That's nearly three and a half years after silence from her (with a very brief Hollows cameo).

The greatest thing you'll ever learn ...

That's the title of her new story.

I took three years off myself from MSR, ... some readers are probably scared right now, after more than a month of silence from me, that I'm about to take another walkabout.

You see, to write is to know, to know is to love, to publish is to share that love.

To be read, as a writer, is to be loved.

The greatest thing. siDEADde knows this, better than me, in fact.

But to love and to be loved ... is that the easiest thing in the World? Sometimes. Sometimes when the chapter flows, for both the reader and the writer, and the love is so thick in the air that people start looking at the mutual admiration society and grumbling, loudly, that a room should be got for all this display.

But sometimes it isn't. Sometimes you put your heart out there, as a writer, and you risk everything, writing it, but that's just the start of the nightmare, because then you have to work up the courage to select "publish chapter," and then you have to wait, and to wait, and to wait for those reviews, and they come, filled with understanding and love, and you cry so hard with the relief that people understood what you wrote and instead of crucifying you, they honor your bravery and courage.

And sometimes the reviews come, and they are angry with you. And they hate you. And, worse, they misunderstand you. And worse, they attack your characters. Your babies.

And sometimes, the reviews don't come at all. And your 'number one fan,' you know them, writers, right? That one person who says and does everything devotedly, and swears they'll buy your books when you publish 'fer realz, yo,' and will be with you to the end.

Your number one fan. She grows distant. Then silent.

Then she's gone.

And it happens over and over and over again. A self-proclaimed number one fan, comes, burns with zeal, then burns out and is gone.

And so a new number one fan shows up, burning, ...

What do you do, dear writer? How much hurt can you take from how many people demanding even more than everything you poured out onto the page? How much can you take before you scream 'FUCK OFF!' at a young girl who printed out your story so she can get your autograph?

But this is her first time at being a number one fan, ever, even if she is your twentieth, isn't it? And even if she is your twentieth number one fan, ...

She's still a person, looking for the greatest thing, and she read your story, and she found it.

What are you going to do?

Hide? Hide from the hurt for three-plus years, and then not publish again, ever, because the hope, the terrible hope, hurts too much? And the fear is crippling?

You, dear writer (ahem: 'me, dear writer') have a gift. And you've shared that gift, and you have fucking rocked people's worlds, so much so that there is now somebody breathing, who would've killed themselves, but they read your story, and hoped. And lived. And shared that story with herself, and couldn't believe it, that somebody else in the world knew her, and understood, and wrote their love on a page, and gave it to her for her to read.  And maybe she shared it with a friend. And maybe she shared it back with you, tentatively, fearfully, tremblingly, in a review she wrote: 'oh god im peeing ur story so good update soon god i love it [backspacing over 'i love u' because she doesn't want you to think she's weird or anything like that].'

And when you replied (you do reply to your reviews, don't you?) she peed herself again when she saw in her inbox 'review reply from geophf' or 'siDEADde' or 'Eowyn77' or whomever. And when you didn't snap her head off, but thanked her, politely, for her review? She just died and went to heaven, and god (you) wasn't mean and nasty and so haughty, but was actually nice?

Well.

It's the greatest thing, isn't it?

It isn't always the easiest thing. Sometimes it's easier to run, and to be harried by the demons inside, screaming at you so loudly you can't even hear yourself think most times, calling you a chickenshit for not writing what you know you should, what you have to, just to touch one other soul in the world, to share your heart, one more time, even if that means it gets torn out and trampled into the dirt, because that one more chapter and story will do something for somebody, somebody you'll never have known otherwise, who needed these words, your words to make it through this impossible day.

So what do we do? We write, we read, we cry, and then maybe even we sigh and get on with our day, and the world is a little bit tiny better place for you and for me.

I write. I don't particularly like it. I do love it, however, and what it does for you. I do love you, even though I'll've never met you in person, ITRW. I write, you read. We love, and are loved.

The greatest thing.

People are people so why should it be ...?

Rosalie and Lizzie. Lizzie and Rosalie.

The archetypical odd couple ... but aren't we all? And I mean 'we all' meaning every single one of us.

Both girls can, and do, so easily hurt each other, and what's worse is that they both want what's the best for the other, and they both see that they are the worst, themselves, and the worse for each other.

Ick. Icky, icky, ick!

The saving grace? Besides nothing, is they are both so pig-headed, and they keep demanding of each other that they don't give up on themselves, and they're stuck all alone in a cabin in the woods, so they have to make things work, because there aren't many other options ... you just can't glower across the room at each other can think mean thoughts. I mean, you can, but that gets silly after about five minutes, and that leaves 23 hours and 55 more minutes to get over it and do something less stupid.

Actually, all of human relations would be a whole lot better, I think, if more people started to realize this. "Hey, I can either be pissed at this (pissy) person, or I can try to make this work instead of glowering or avoiding!"

Hey! Imagine that!

Sometimes I'm okay at doing that, sometimes ... not so much.

My hat's off to both girls, both Lizzie and Rosalie. They are doing everything wrong, and all the time, at that, but Rosalie is a well of (impatient and angry) patience ... each hour she doesn't just outright kill Lizzie is a (not-so-small) victory, it seems, and Lizzie is ... well, if I were in her shoes, I don't think I'd've lasted half a day, but she keeps trying, and failing, and getting beat down for failing (?!?) and keeps trying to pick herself up so she can at least try to fail again. And she does this even though she knows she's in for heaps of trouble, but she just keeps trying.

Would I do that, in her shoes? Would anybody? Day after day, hour after hour with super-angry Rosalie who has some Serious Issues that she's wearing right on her sleeve?

They just keep going at each other and for each other, and when they go with each other ... now, that will be a sight to behold, and perhaps, when they do do that, it won't be major, nor surprising, nor Earth-shattering, ... maybe they'll just do it, and not even realize it, and maybe they will, and maybe they'll be amazed, and maybe they'll be just fine with it, and that's all.

They have worked so, so hard, fighting each other, every step of the way, so maybe when they push together, instead of push against each other, maybe they'll just say 'Oh, so that's how easy it is!'

Maybe. I guess we'll just have to ride with them, on their journey, and see for ourselves ... discover what 'this' will be, right along with them as they discover it, too.

If they don't screw it up first.

Ick.

Writing and Sharing

This is a note of inspiration I left on 750words-dot-com on not-writing, writing again, and sharing.

Phoenix [an award for writing at least 750 words 100 days in a row].

I had a 58 day streak going, then I lost it, and I was like: 'Ugh! I don't want to have to start over!' But that didn't matter. What was in front of me was that I was starting over, whether I wanted to, or not.

And I learned from my 58-day streak. I learned I could go 58 days, and I learned that if I let my writing slide, then the day gets in the way, and then I get tired, and no matter how much I want to write before midnight, sleep still won, at least one day in 58. So, now, I write the very first thing. I know if I write starting right after midnight and get in my 750+ words, then that's one thing that I did that I said I would do for the day, and it makes the rest of the day so much better. And, when I don't do that, when I do sleep earlier, which is occasionally, then the first thing I do when I wake up is weigh myself, take my vitamins, drink my orange juice, and write, and write until I'm done, and write before my self-imposed 9 am deadline.

And when I don't do that, which is these last two days, then I have from 9 am until midnight to get in 750 words.

AND ... I have a sense of urgency about it. I have 102 days on this streak, and I'm not interested in breaking it this time.

So, I write.

And I enjoy it, when I get it done in a timely fashion, and I enjoy it when I have 15 more hours to get it done.

So, I'm enjoying writing, very much now.

I have something to compare it to: I took more than three years off from writing, and I just bottled all these thoughts and feelings inside, and I was irritable and unpleasant to be around. My fault, and I knew what to do about it. And I didn't. For a year. Then a reader of my story "My Sister Rosalie," 'demanded' I get back to it or all kinds of ill-wishes would come my way.

So I wrote the next chapter, chapter 56, and it was terrible. But it was 10k words, and it was a start, and now I'm working on ch 79, and I'm happy again. I'm writing again, and touching people's lives, where they are, and giving them something to read and to enjoy with the promise, God willing, that they'll have something to look forward to in that next chapter forthcoming and in the next book when I finish this one.

And 750words.com keeps me on track, writing, every day, a little something to keep this story going, to keep me going, and to keep hope, enjoyment, anticipation alive in my readers.

It's a very, very good thing, writing, then sharing it, then knowing that you've touched people's hearts.

A Scar

This chapter came right from my heart. From the mommies talking at the grocery store to Rosalie holding Lizzie in her hands, trying to comfort her, trying to tell her that she knew, and that it was okay.

We never made it to 'okay.'

Lizzie wasn't the only one who grew up this way, and at a time when families breaking up were new in America, so the parents had to stay together until the kids left the home for college to avoid stigmatizing their children, so the children felt that separation, that breaking, ...

and you couldn't do anything about it.

And then they didn't wait, and so my kid sister ...

So she had to be strong, and the funny thing is that she's the most complete, most no-nonsense person in our fractured family, but she didn't have a happy childhood, at all. Ever.

And, well, me.

I identify with Lizzie here, too.

But I didn't have a Rosalie to tell me any of this, not until today, or when I wrote the second half of this chapter. And I didn't have a Rosalie to hold me and to understand.

So, I just broke, all by myself, right in my third week of flight school.

I so wanted to fly, well, anything in the Coast Guard, and I was there already. I was flying planes.

And then my career was over. Right then. Right that day. All they had to do was have the paperwork catch up with me, which took about two years, it being the military.

So I had to go do something else.

And here I am, 25 years later, doing something else.

Something else is nice.

But it's something else, and if I were flying jets or helicopters, rescuing people out of the Arctic Ocean, would I've been happy? I've saved over 150 people's lives north of Alaska and then rescued at least three teens crossing the border to and from Mexico.

Am I happy because of that?

Lizzie was scarred, and she didn't even realize it until Rosalie pointed it out.

The thing about being scarred? You did the dishes before, you'll do the dish afterward.

Now you know you have a scar there, somewhere there, while you're doing the dishes.

And you can pick at it, scratch at it, or you can pretend it's not there. Nobody else sees it, nobody else cares, so, actually, it must not be there, right? It all happened in the past. And the 'it' was nothing, it was just your parents raising you, as the best they could, and look! you turned out well! Success!

It was nothing, and nobody else sees and nobody else cares, not really. Life goes on, and so must you, mustn't you?

So you can pretend it isn't there, right? It's healed and you're fine. Scar tissue heals, right?

Actually, it doesn't. A scar is a scar, and it either stays or it leaves its mark on you. That little knock you got running into the table's corner when you were a baby? It's still there, ten, twenty, fifty years later. Nobody else 'sees' it, but you still see the bump, and you still rub it, sometimes, remembering.

So, not knowing it's there, pretending it's not there. The road to happiness? Ignorance is bliss, right?

Except that it is there, and it affects everything you say, and everything you do.

So, acknowledging it? "I have a scar. I had this happen when I was a kid. It happened then. But I still remember it. I still feel it, if I think about it, and when I don't think about it, ... I still feel it. I still hunch my shoulders that way. I still look down, or look away, or blush, or cry, and I didn't know why. But now I do know why."

Is that worse, acknowledging it?

It feels worse, so it must be worse. So let's pretend that I don't know it's there, and see if I can get by with that.

Yup. I can get by.

Look at me, Mommy, I'm getting by! I'm all grown up now. Aren't you proud?

Yes, this was a really, really easy chapter for me to write.

All I had to do was to be just a little tiny bit honest with myself.

Is MSR femslash?

I get this question occasionally from readers.

Is MSR femslash, or gfs? or bffs? or sisterhood?

Well, what is it?

That's what Rosalie would ask you as you read this story, wouldn't she?

That's the question you ask yourself when you look at a girl you're looking at, right? Is she The One? Is she even gay? or curious? will she like me? will I like her?

Do you know the answers to ANY of these questions before hand?

I don't think you do. Or, if you do, you're already judging her. If she has to be The One, then she can't be herself, and you've already doomed the relationship, because she can't be herself if she has to be The One for you, right?

If Lizzie HAS to be femslash with Rosalie, then all this wind-up is pointless, and they should've been in bed at chapter 2 if I was a slow writer and by the second paragraph in the first chapter if I wanted to get right to the goods, right? That's what femslash is, right? Skip the preliminaries and get right to it.

Well, that's what the usual fare of femslash is, but the really, really good pieces actually do let Bella and Rosalie get to know each other, get to cry a bit because college is hard and Bella's dad dies and Rosalie has commitment issues and a bit of a b-tch and maybe a little (too) slvtty because she's compensating for these wounds she carries in her heart that she has to be that way to receive love, even if it's fake or physical. And you learn to love these girls and when they do fall into each other's arms, it's because they love each other, not because it's femslash and that's what they're supposed to do ...

You know the story I'm talking about? Read: Mechanical Difficulties by HopelessRomantic79.

Now, my BxR story is a little different than that. Okay, it's WAY different than that, and different than most of what I've read on this site.

As you have seen.

But do you see where this is going?

Yeah, you do. Maybe. The thing is I have the whole story mapped out: all three books of it, but Lizzie and Rose are surprising me at every chapter. I had written three chapters ahead of this one (ch 66: Schadenfreude), and I had to throw all of that out, all 12k+ words because Rose just broke down and told Lizzie her name. She wasn't supposed to do that. And Lizzie wasn't supposed to take charge like this and start to arrange things. She wasn't suppose to do this until halfway into Book II.

But here they are, and they refuse to let the plot drive them, no: they are two people, two scared people wondering if this can work, and wondering what 'this' even is! One of them has no experience whatsoever in love, never had a bf, never been kissed, and dropped out of school because people are just too weird for her, so she'd rather live at home with her Pa, who is quiet and safe and predictable. The other girl was raped and murdered by five men, so her whole view of love is twisted and filled with hate: totally unromantic. She's given up on love, seeing it as a power-thing, useless to her, and she's given up on herself, seeing herself as hateful and broken: unfixable, unloveable.

Put those two together and what do you get? femslash? friendship? sisterhood?

Well, what you've gotten so far is 66 chapters of MSR with a lot of anger on Rosalie's part and a lot of tears on Lizzie's part. Both of them have a long way to go before they can ... what?

Well, they've started to heal, just a little tiny bit, they've started to hug some, they've started to open up, just a bit to each other, and ...

And, well ... it's a start. A real start. There's false starts because you try something, and whoops! that didn't work, but instead of being cool about it, Lizzie breaks down in tears and Rosalie gets furious, so there's plenty of backsliding.

But are they trying? And what are they trying for?

Rosalie was right: Lizzie is a little chicken-sh-t, and she has no idea what she wants.

But Rosalie? All you have to do is read my side story: Rose by a Lemon Tree to know that any criticism she has of Lizzie is nothing to the problems she's saddled herself with.

Rosalie knows what she wants. Just ask her. Or, actually, she says she knows what she wants, and is very sure and confident in saying exactly what she wants and how she wants it all to work out.

The thing about Rosalie is that what she says she wants, and what she really wants, may be two different things, but her own pride so blinds her to that difference that she doesn't even know nor acknowledge that there exists a difference at all. So she says she wants to keep her distance, that she would rather have Lizzie hate her than draw any closer to her, for, after all: she's a monster, twisted and evil and incapable of love.

She knows this: just ask her.

But then she gives Lizzie her name, and says she never had a sister ... that is, she never had a girl close to her. She never gave anyone else her heart. Not really. Not to Royce. She planned her future with Royce, with their perfect wedding and their perfect family with their perfectly well-behaved children, but she never gave Royce her real heart, her true love, and maybe Royce sensed this, her aloofness, her haughtiness, and maybe he felt threatened by that: his manhood was called into question, because no matter how much of a man he was(not), he was never able fully to possess 'his' Rose, never fully able to own her nor to make her scared of him and grovel like everybody else did, all this employees and sycophant friends.

Who has had Rosalie heart? Not even Vera, her friend. Because Rosalie could feel superior to her. Vera married low and moved on and left Rosalie behind, because Vera followed her heart.

And Rosalie never did.

Rosalie never gave her heart away, and Lizzie was never given the chance to.

So, can Lizzie muster up the courage to say 'I love you, Rosalie Hale'? because for sure Rosalie's not going to say that. Ever. That is: first. Rosalie can't give her heart away now. It's far too painful.

It really, really doesn't look good, does it?

But Lizzie has grown, and Rosalie, even though she won't admit it, has, too.

So, maybe ... maybe.

And that's my answer. It's not definitive, but does live give you a priori definitive answers? If it does, is that living life, or going through the motions in a limited little box of a maze and calling that life? Life is lived in the questions, isn't it? and finding your own answers to the questions you dare to ask. If someone else spoonfeeds you answers, then do those answers have any meaning? or any worth or value? That is, being given to you instead of earned.

You can be handed a person and told: you're sleeping with her tonight. And many, many girls in the world are told just that. But it's up to them to find in the person they choose the things to love, be in that person in their arms right now, or the one they go out, seek, and find. Or the one that comes to find them.

But you have to choose whom to love, and you have to choose why, right? And you have to make it work, every day.

Is MSR femslash? or friendship? or sisterhood?

Maybe.

That's up to Rosalie to let go of her pride and 'what's right' in her eyes, and up to Lizzie to let go of fear and embrace her hope.

Just as it is for you to give up your pride and fear and embrace your hope, and write your own story. That's what Lizzie and Rosalie are (tentatively) doing, and isn't it an exciting, hopeful, just so different read? And for them, living it, so, so scary, so new?

Is your life femslash, friends or sisters? Do you want to keep living the safe ho-hum life everybody else lives? Or throw your heart out there, get hurt, badly, and, maybe, just maybe, let her catch it and cradle your heart, and you, in her arms, as you cradle her?

geophf, writer of that really weird story MSR signing off; I have to get back to writing that next chapter.

Little Red's conundrum

I've posted the first chapter to a new story titled "Little Red Riding Hood." It's about Victoria going into the forest to deliver her bundle of goodies and then encountering something she's not expecting.

Rosalie looks human, acts human, so she's human, right?

Victoria has a problem, and that problem is that she has no clue what she's up against, so she keeps fighting Rosalie like she would anybody else and keeps getting surprised when things that normally would work ... don't.

And she has another problem, she has her ability, and she uses that, instead of her brain. Like she says, she doesn't process things in a fight, so her not thinking things through is costing her in this fight.

But that's everybody's problem. You see this girl in front of you, you kick her in the stomach, and she doesn't go down, and she laughs at you. What are you going to do? Run from a girl? Or get really annoyed at everything that's not working. Both are the wrong answer, but what if there were no right answer? Nobody believes that's possible, until they are faced with the impossibility of it, indeed.

Vicky walks into Rosalie's forest, and she's going to get a wake-up call about what her whole life has been. She wasn't looking for this, she was trying to 'get by.' But 'getting by,' ... what is the price for that?

This fic looks at that. Over and over again.

Well, it did start with 'once upon a time, ...' so does that mean that it will end with '... and they lived happily ever after'?

MSR ch 60: a question of rape

In this chapter, Rosalie was in a pickle. Doing what she 'had' to do, and getting caught in the middle of that and destroying a human person that she's trying to save: Bella.

By raping her?

And Bella, finally, calls this out.

Yes, Bella pulled the r-card, but the parallel was so right there for her: Royce raped Rosalie, and now Rosalie is doing the exact same thing to Bella under nearly the exact same conditions. That's what she saw Rosalie was doing.

And, in fact, Rosalie was doing exactly that. Bella said 'please,' 'no' and 'stop' over and over again, and Rosalie just kept going, ignoring Bella's pleas to stop, just to prove a point.

The next question is ... well, the next chapter, there's that question: 'Why?' and then how does Rosalie answer Bella's question if not through direct experience (as that worked SO well, didn't it) and how does Bella recover, ... or is she recovering already?

I struggle with this. A girl is nearly r-aped, so ... how can she stand to be in the same room with the person, the monster, who that morning lost control and wouldn't listen to her?

Ick. Here we go.

The thing is, this is an issue of fiction, but this is an issue that so confronts us today. You're a teenager, and you're trying to find yourself and your place in the world ... fit in? stand out? And the sexual identity is so tied up with all of that, because who are you sexually?

When you're asking questions, you open yourself up, and in opening yourself up, you play games with it, flirting, discovering, having fun, trying to fit in, or trying to stand apart. And you also open yourself up to the possibility heart break and to getting hurt.

Bella isn't, in this story now, ready to face the questions of her sexually identity, and isn't ready to have them thrust on her right this very moment and given the choice right now, whether she wants to not.

But how many of us had to face the same choices, and give in quietly and not make a scene so you can be cool and fit in, even as your very being pays a price for that? Or to scream and to fight with all your might ... and still have to pay a price for that?

And how do we recover from a scar that nobody can see, but you see in everybody's eyes when they look at you? Rosalie asks herself that question: how do I go on? How do I get a new boyfriend, when he already knows I've been raped?

Bella now has do her own recovery, and do it sharing a one room cabin with the very monster that this morning forced herself on her.

How does she do that?

How do we?

---

An answer: understanding and forgiveness

One of my readers has already answered the above question in her own way. If Bella understands Rosalie in what she was trying, and failed, to do, then, that doesn't make it acceptable, ok, or cancel what Rosalie actually did but it can pave the path to forgiveness. Other thoughts about this chapter (after you've read it, of course)?

Being a Twilight Dad

So, I'm to be interviewed by a newspaper tomorrow morning, in anticipation of the release of (the movie) Eclipse. We are going to be talking what it is to be a man, and a dad, reading or experiencing Twilight.

Hm, that is an interesting question, as there are fewer men that read Twilight than women, and probably only a few of those men actually read Twilight not just to entertain or to tolerate this 'foolish fancy' of their S.O.'s.

So I'm sure the interview will focus on the whys of maleness/fatherness and Twilightness. But, and I don't know if you know this about me, but I tend to look for and to look at universals, and being a man or a woman makes a huge difference in many things, but aren't we all looking for many of the same things, looking in our different ways, but still looking for these common things that connect us all.

So, man or woman, adult or child, we read Twilight for some very clear things that it gives us.

What are those things? Tell me. I'm going into the interviewing 'representing,' as it were, and representing a target group: Twilight Dad(s). But I'm also going to be representing me, obviously, but I'm also going to be representing you. So tell me so that I can represent: what is the draw of Twilight for you?

The Eternal Marriage of Twilight Vampires

Twilight vampires, once they love, love forever, don't they?

Yes, Rosalie doesn't let go, does she? And she doesn't get over it. That's what Mormonism did, co-opting vampires, which were a Catholic construct. So Catholic, in fact, that a protestant writer could not avoid putting in the transubstantiated Host and crosses (which Protestants, at the time, equated to symbols of Popery), but the Mormon church isn't Catholicism with the concept of Grace, but its significance is that of the Eternal Marriage.

And so, here in Twilight, vampires are Eternally Loving, even though the beloved is gone, they just cannot let go of that love, as it is fundamental to what they are. They love, and they love forever, even after Bella, the beloved, has been dead for centuries, even though Didyme has been dead for thousands of years, Marcus still loves her, eternally.

And one might think: ick. No fun. Nothing to explore here. But for me, as a writer and thinker, this gives so much depth to what could simply be described as Yet Another Teen Angst Story.

And perhaps Twilight is simply, merely, that: YATAS. And perhaps that's why the vampires of interest are teenagers, just so struggling with (and against) who and what they are, unlike alucarD, who is perfectly happy in what he is ... he delights in it, in fact, rejoices in the utter cruelty of his actions.

There's a guy who loves to go to work.

But perhaps we, or I, can learn from the struggles teens have. The uncertainty. The 'not getting over it.' The 'always and forever' weightiness of what goes into decisions and thoughts.

And on the flip side ... to be loved eternally? To be Immortal Beloved? "Ick," says many: "stop being so clingy!"

Or, to have that steadfastness? That rock-steadiness? That security that Rosalie will always love Bella (as in Reminiscence)?

Rosalie's stuck there. Edward's stuck in Twilight. His 'stuckage' turns out 'happily' in that his eternal love can now be directed at an eternal lover.

Just as is the case for Carlisle and Esmé. Isn't Esmé content in Carlisle's love? And isn't Carlisle assured in hers?

Esmé will never have to doubt Carlisle's devotion to her ... or will she? (Okay, so she may have doubts, see "Her Transformation," ch 1) Wouldn't that be a nice thing to have in a marriage?

I say yes. But then the flip side is this story: a vampire makes the choice, commits to the choice, even unwillingly, and there it is, eternally. Even 300 years later. Even Forever. This is one of the consequences of Eternity, and Twilight vampires are Eternal.

Just ask Rosalie: she knows that very well.

"So, you write fan-fiction, huh?"

I have a question.

So, if anything is possible, what's stopping you?

Nothing.

I read. I write. I have had an editor, a dear friend, named LiLa ("Lion in the Land") for about a year. She's been writing, too.

And she's published her first book under the name Nicki Elson called Three Daves, about a girl going to college in the 80s and meeting three guys, each named Dave.

She wrote this story, she shared this story with her friends, and then she published it, and now it's a book.

So, if anything is possible, what is available?

Everything.

For LiLa, what was available that her story is now a book. It was real before, just for herself, then it was real for a select few thousands that read it and the select few hundreds that encouraged her writing, dozens of them at each chapter she published.

And now it's a book, and now it's real for the world.

...

But what does this have to do with the title of this entry?

Jennifer meets Dave, Dave, and Dave in college, and 80s music plays a big role in the story.

Sound familiar? Anybody go to twilighted.net and visit Lion_in_the_Land (note the user id)? Remember the awards and interviews she's had about an AU/AH story she wrote about Bella going off to college in Chicago in the 80s and meeting Jasper and Emmett and Edward?

Or Dave, Dave, and Dave?

Remember all those reviews she got? The ones that said: "OMG! Your writing is so good ..." and all that and "You should write a book!" and all that?

Well, she did.

Now let's look in the mirror for a second, my dear "so, you write fan-fiction, huh?" author(esse)s. Ever got that review or reviews that said, "OMG! Your writing is so good! You should write a book!" But you said: "Oh, I just write fan-fiction; I can't write a book, and who would read it?" and they come right back: "I WOULD!"

"Oh, I just write fan-fiction" as if that's bad? "I can't write a book"

LiLa did. She found a way.

Do you see that trail she blazed for you, me, and everybody? Did she do it for us? Maybe. Maybe not.

But the trail is there now, and it's real.

A fan-fiction authoress that we know and whose stories we've read is now a published authoress.

And to think she almost didn't do it, and just one little song gave her that whatever to put out that first chapter, and her very first reviewer gave her that sense of self that, hey, somebody likes my stuff.

Are you going to publish a book? Maybe. Maybe not. You now can see from LiLa that this possibility does exist for you, even if you've just written one chapter with just one reviewer saying she liked it. Because not so long ago, LiLa was right there.

So let's say you decide to publish. Great! You win. And the lives you touch with your story, now that it's a book?

You win. Big time. And this guy will be standing here with his mouth wide open and his heart fit to bursting, just so happy for you and for your success.

So let's say you decide not to publish now.

You can still win. Because somewhere, there's a LiLa you know whose story you love.

Review it.

Say to her how you love it. What exactly in that chapter makes you laugh so hard you puke or cry so hard you need cleaner for your keyboard? Say this to her. Encourage her.

Because then, she just may publish that next chapter, she just may comment that, hey, your review lifted her spirits, and it may just give her enough to finish the story, and maybe, maybe-maybe-maybe, publish it as a book, so you can hold it in your hands, and know that, wow, she did it. You know somebody who did it and were there with her during the creation of that book, chapter by chapter.

I came along after she finished her story, and she's taken the twilight version off of twilighted and ffn, but my congratulations to her, no: my admiration of her and her work is right here, right now.

LiLa is one of the stars of fan-fiction writers, and her success and the praise she receives is well-deserved. She writes from the heart, and that heart is joyful.

You know your own LiLa, my dear authoress, all you have to do keep encouraging her with your honest reviews.

Or, all you have to do is to look in the mirror, and take that step of pressing that 'add chapter' button, or of mailing off that manuscript to the next publisher.