“Holy Crap, this girl can write!”

Six words.  Seven Syllables.  Everything shifted every so gently.

Yesterday, I had the honor of attending a workshop hosted by an author whom I greatly admire.  Did I mentioned she is published?  Very published ladies and gentlemen, in the way of three or more dozen novels, not including the novels re-printed in Russian, French, and other languages I wished I would have learned before my brain stopped being a sponge.

The last half of the workshop the author held a critique of our works in progress.  Of the group of five, my critique was last.  Why?  Because of a shoe.  One errant shoe lost by my seven-year old Busy Son (because, after all, I am the Chief Finder of Things, Lost and Hidden).  The shoe was nowhere to be found, and we needed something other than a sock covering his left foot before I could drop them off with Sparkly Hubby and make my way north to the bookstore. I was last to read because I found the shoe, but forgot my manuscript.

I arrived at the workshop, and realizing  my error, my stomach dropped through my size ten Born clogs. I was lucky.  Linda, the goddess of Books Alive, grabbed my SD card and saved the day, printing my work in progress and handed it to me just as the fourth review ended.

So the author read my words.  Midway, she stopped reading my novel, her eyes glistening.  I was concerned that I had erred terribly with my writing, perhaps I included too many adverbs or “ands” or “thens” — maybe it was just bad composition.  I thought the worst — until I realized that my words had made her cry.   And when she was done reading she looked at me and uttered the six words that title this post, the seven syllables that will keep me writing, for another day.

Now, if I could just find that missing backpack . . .