February 25, 2017 - Roman Holiday

February 25, 2017

Roman Holiday

The first time I saw the movie, Roman Holiday, I loved it.  I know every little girl dreams of being the princess that Audrey Hepburn played, but I wanted to be the reporter played by Gregory Peck, living in the tiny, efficiency apartment, writing for a newspaper, and living in Rome.

My grandma thinks it’s her fault that I am living in Bolivia.  She took me on a trip to Israel when I was 13 and now she thinks that is why I love to travel.  It was my first trip overseas, but it didn’t create this dream in me.  She took me to Israel because I was the one grandkid who would devour the National Geographic from cover to cover, especially if they reported on cities like Rome, Vienna, Madrid, Isfahan, or Rio de Janeiro.  She took me because she knew it would be meaningful to me.

When I was a teenager, twice I went to Rome with my class at Duncanville High.  I saw every place they visited in the movie.  I felt like I was beginning to live out my dream.

At 19, I became a Christian, a believer in Jesus Christ.  My love for travel turned into a love for foreign missions.  I have had the privilege of being a part of ten mission trips to Mexico, two to Nicaragua, one to Trinidad, and another to Lithuania.  And I am now living in Bolivia for the second time in my life.  My love for travel has not stopped.  I want to see and experience as many places as possible before I am too old to do it anymore.

My first time in Bolivia I was so busy that I rarely had time to think.  When I returned to Texas and started working at Nash Intermediate in Kaufman, I discovered I had free time.  That is when I started writing Spartan Sisters.  But I didn’t tell anybody about that.  You might ask why, but the answer is simple.  I was embarrassed.

I was embarrassed that someone would read my novel and think it was pretentious, boring, or stupid.  I did not want to deal with telling everybody that I wanted to be a writer.  People always ask why and I would be expected to tell them.  Why a novel about the Trojan War?  And I’d get that glassy-eyed stare and have to explain to someone who really didn’t care and would never even read the first page of the novel.

But I kept writing.  I spent years rewriting Spartan Sisters, trying to make it perfect.  I’d see how someone else wrote an opening and tried to emulate them.  I would read a character description and go back to my characters and know I had work to do.

I’d have other ideas for novels too, but school kept me busy enough that I usually only worked on writing during summer or Christmas breaks.  Yesterday I was looking through my flash drives at the various novels I have started.  Sometimes I had chills at something so well-written or I’d laugh at a scene that begged me to work on it.  I have a dozen novels in various stages.  Onesimus, the one I am writing now, and Remembering Sorrento are both about halfway complete.  I must finish those.  I plan to finish both in 2017.

I had several reasons to return to Bolivia.  First, I wanted to see if I could recapture my experience of living in Bolivia in the 80s.  Second, I wanted to explore a different world than my home in North Texas.  And third, I wanted to express what is in my heart through my writing.

Exploring Santa Cruz, Samaipata, Tarija, and Sucre in the fall of 2016 caused my desire to express what I was experiencing.  The butterflies hovering over the road to Samaipata.  The chocolate covered hills out the plane window flying into Tarija.  The bluest sky I could ever imagine at the dinosaur park in Sucre.  The Milky Way that I remember from a visit 30 years ago, to Buena Vista. This place is so beautiful.  I just have to tell somebody.  Maybe the only somebody who will listen will be me.

By November, I discovered I love to write. Taking walks around the city sometimes inspires me.  I see a chapter clearly in my head and have to write.  Sometimes I know where I want to go, so I just write until I get there.  One night I was pondering a scene in Onesimus.  I knew how I wanted to end it, but I could not figure out how to get from the beginning to that ending.  At 11:00, lying in bed, it hit me.  I knew how to do it.  I went to the living room, turned on my computer, and started writing notes.  The next thing I knew, it was 4:00 in the morning, and the whole scene was written in front of me. That is the kind of life I want to lead.  It might sound crazy to you, but it sounds invigorating to me.

My desire is to write.  I must write.  I want to return to the innocence of the child who watched Roman Holiday with wonder or read about Venice in National Geographic planning to go there one day.  I want to tell the story of Joseph in Egypt and Mary, the mother of Christ.  I want to introduce you to the real Dracula, not the Hollywood stereotype.  I want to explore the conquests of Mexico and Peru.  I want to show you a love story based on an incident on my high school trip to Italy.  I have so much to say.  I’m sorry, I can’t be quiet.

Yes, I am writing for your enjoyment, but even more I am writing to discover me.  I am in Bolivia on my Roman holiday.

If you want to keep track of my writing career by purchasing my novels, here is the link to my Amazon author page.