I never understood how someone could work on a book for ten years…
But now I do.
It has been Two, and the real work is just beginning to impress itself
upon me.     Editing… endlessly updating, minimalizing, saying it with less
words for more impact.
Two years ago my writing was different than today, with ramblings and
meandering paths to get somewhere, not always sure where that was.

I like to think I have grown as a writer, but more likely six months from
now, I will be chuckling away at my attempts to smoothly tell a tale.
Thus we grow.

As I proof read the earliest pages, I simultaneously tick away on the
completion of the final months of the story, the least pleasant times, the
stretching and waking times, of this saga of love, love lost and self found.

But there’s a bigger picture that is emerging, and it is social in nature…
Men and Women, what society asks, teaches, demands of each, for he
and I are archetypal characters …
Women lost in love fantasy, Men lost in proving themselves,
and the cost to each.

There is an overlay of thoughts right now, as I ponder War and it’s
effect on the men in our world.  Society says they are Heros, but at what
cost, to them and to society in general?  My firsthand account of the before
and after of this man cuts deeply into what we loose, even when we win.

And lastly, an even bigger perspective on the cost society exacts from those
who stand out, are different enough to question too much, to achieve too
much, to have been gifted more than their share.
Often they are not rewarded, appreciated or lifted up, but made to feel the
outcast for doing exactly what society tells them they should….
To be the best you can be, although it never seems enough.

And anger, the anger at the Real Lies fed to us, the ones we believed in as
children, the lies that we thought we should follow and embody, women
and men, each following what seemed to be the Truth, and the resulting
pain and disappointment that we see everywhere today.

And so my work is cut out for me.  and I intend to persevere.