Sherri Cornelius

I wrote today. Fiction.

You know how big a deal that is. Or maybe you don’t, because I’m not sure how much of that angst came through in my sporadic posting. But let me tell you, it’s a big deal.

It is Independence Day weekend—could this event signal new creative independence? Freedom from fear, from stagnation, from oppression?

I don’t know, but it feels good. Give me a flag to wave.

Thank you sincerely for all your declarations of support after yesterday’s confession. I want to assure you that I’m fine, even better than fine because I finally have some movement on this issue that’s been dogging me for a long time. My feeling is that everything will work out for the best, and however that manifests is good with me. How very zen of me.

I’ve found an online support group for wives of alcoholics, so I have somewhere to go for advice. I’ll be getting a job of some kind when the kids go back to school so I won’t feel so helpless.

I’ve worked really hard not to talk him down to the kids, to keep his image good in their eyes, to focus on his strengths, but now I’m thinking it’s time to acknowledge to them his drinking is not normal. They don’t like his drinking or smoking, but I didn’t want to contaminate their feelings with my own frustrations. Now I can see that he would never have a frank discussion with them about it, and if they are enlightened it will be me doing it. Still haven’t decided how to handle that, and I guess that’s where my support group will come in.

I wondered if I would regret posting about this issue after a good night’s sleep, and I don’t. I’m glad I got it off my chest. I’m owning my problems and mistakes instead of running from them, and that’s empowering. Scary, but empowering.

There is a secret I carry, and I’ve decided to remove this secret of its power over my life by bringing it into the light. I’ve told myself over the years that it’s not my secret to tell, and telling would be disloyal to my husband. I accepted his denial as my own, and looking back I think I was actually brainwashed in a way, as substance abuse distorts everything through a lens of deception and insanity and makes you doubt your own observations and wisdom.

So that’s my secret, sneaked into that previous sentence because I’m too much of a coward to say it outright. It still feels disloyal to say my husband is an alcoholic, even though I realized a couple of days ago that it is every bit as much my problem as it is his—and probably even more so, since I’m left scrambling to pick up the pieces of our life together as he lets them slip through his fingers. I’m no different than any other woman married to a substance abuser. I’m trying to keep the problems from touching my kids, and trying to love and support him into getting help, just trying to do the right thing in general.

This secret peeks out every now and then in my writings, like when I allude to my challenging marriage or problems I can’t talk about. But I can talk about them, and I think I need to talk about them. But of course the substance abuse is a much greedier and needier animal than I, and I catered to it for far too long. I don’t have to talk about the substance abuse itself because that actually is my husband’s domain, but I can talk about the way this substance abuse has affected me. And so I shall.

I might start a new blog for this topic, if I find I have a lot to say about it. Or I might use one of my old wordpress URLs for it. I might chicken out and delete this post and never speak of it again. But if I do that, I think the act of writing it down and putting it out there will still be beneficial. And at least the people who care about me most, my regular readers, will know what’s going on.

So here’s where I am right now. Since the beginning of May I’ve been camped out on the futon in the den, which contains the washer and dryer, our second (and awful) tv, and the kids’ computer. There’s no door to this space, and the futon is so hard it takes an hour to work out the morning stiffness in my joints. I’ve given up on convincing him to go for treatment, or even the simple hope for a meaningful conversation about it. The only thing left to do is withdraw from the source and save myself. I fear the changes this will undoubtedly bring, yet I’m convinced the fear of the unknown was what kept me here all this time--15 years, total. I can’t afford to be afraid anymore. It killed my spirit a long time ago, and now it’s causing physical problems.

My feelings are all in a jumble, but one thought has carried me onward, and it’s this one: Shouldn’t I care for myself at least as much as I have cared for this illness? For that’s what I’ve been doing, caring for the illness, catering to it and enabling it so that we can seem “normal” and give my kids a chance. Divorce ripped me apart as a child, so I’ve seen it as the thing to avoid at all cost. I just don’t know what to do. So I wait until it becomes clear, as I feel it will soon.

Hitting publish…

I think if I just started typing every day, whether or not I have a topic in mind, I’d post a lot more often. Nothing seems important enough to write down, except for some stuff I can’t really talk about. But today I decided to take the plunge and just write anything. Just communicate.

I haven’t been writing fiction at all for a long while, so long that I don’t even feel guilty anymore. Letting my agent go let me go. I felt like the band of a slingshot must feel right after it releases its missile, flaccidly bouncing with the force of the release. I’m not ready to load another stone, but I am finally still enough to begin hunting for the perfect one. The hunt might take a while, and apparently I’m fine with that.

As I’m opening files and emails I haven’t looked at in months, I’ve found something disturbing. I’d thought Black Veil Angel, what I consider my better book, had been barely subbed, maybe to ten or so smaller publishers, while Ea’s Gift had been subbed to the death. Now I see it’s the other way around. My agent had abandoned EG in favor of BVA (apparently it was the better book), and I was so deep in my helplessness that I’d never laid the subs out side by side.

The reason this is disturbing is that BVA was going to get me another agent, if I ever decided to try that route again, and EG was self-pub fodder, something that didn’t have a life in traditional publishing but was good enough to experiment with. I thought my future was in contemporary fantasy anyway, so it would be fine. But the most likely next project, the one that captures my imagination, is another traditional fantasy like EG, complete with a dragon.

So all this means is that I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing. This whole time I’ve been trying to balance what I want to write with what I think others want me to write, which is impossible. I bought into the advice that it’s best to have a whole bunch of people read your stuff and tell you how to fix it, no matter what. I’m starting to think this is a big reason my creativity died.

Other people, those who don’t have a people-pleasing gene as dominant as mine, might do well with this advice. For me, it’s just managed to confuse me enough that I freeze up. I haven’t had a vision for my projects, I see in hindsight, except to write what pleases others. And not in an attagirl way, an ego puffing way, but that if other people don’t like my work, then my work isn’t valid.

What I see now is, if others don’t like my work it might not get published, but that doesn’t make it less valid. And once I understood that, it was easy to see that somebody is going to like my work, if I am authentic and true. Some people know this and apply it instinctively. I never did.

Three years ago I made a list of things I wanted, things I felt would make me a more fulfilled, whole person. I’m amazed at the number of things on this list that I actually did receive.

1. Brand-new car—My Saturn’s not brand new, but a perfectly wonderful substitute


2. Brand-new house—I no longer feel desperate for this like I used to.


3. Happy relationship—we’ve always had a rocky relationship, and I’m not seeing that change anytime soon.


4. Nicer clothes—Somewhat, because I’m working at it


5. off foodstamps—it was scary, but we are now government assistance-free


6. good health—The health problems I had then are still with me, but I’m learning to manage them. Also, I’m working on solutions now.


7. book published—grumble grumble


8. BVA finished—Done!


9. new recliner—Got one for my husband, and a futon for me.


10. home repairs--That’s happening next week.


11. bicycle—Got this before I had a car to take Maggie Rose to school


12. tighter skin—probably wishful thinking, at my age. :)


13. new laptop, lightweight, fast, pretty. Plenty of memory, comfy keyboard. Strong but light. GREAT BATTERY! –Got this one for Christmas last year


14. cell phone—It’s been a life saver


15. I want to feel free to be myself.—Might never stop working on this one, but I feel more myself than ever


16. iPod—We have 3! Hand-me-downs from my mom, but perfectly usable.

That’s 12 out of 16! And while at the beginning, three years seems like forever, it’s really not long in the scheme of things. So maybe I need to make another list. It’ll be a lot shorter now that I’ve received so many of the things I needed. And you know what? There’s still time to receive the other things on my list.
Those things did enrich my life. They helped me feel more independent, more relevant, more connected—and most importantly they brought joy to me when I needed it.
Have you received anything you’ve asked for lately?

Can’t sleep. The moon is so bright, and this futon is so uncomfortable, and lately my mind just races if the tv’s not on. Last night I was up till three. The night before that, one.

What I’d really like to do is go outside and talk to the moon, but the creaking door would wake the hubs, and we have neighbors who would hear me. The moon the way it is tonight, it makes me want things. Like love letters, really steamy, handwritten ones with a wax seal, or maybe tied with a ribbon. Or to sit by the fire, listening to someone play an acoustic guitar. To lie on the grass, holding hands and just looking at the stars. Things like that. But with my laptop on, I can’t even see the moonlight.

This is the last week of school, so soon it won’t matter how late I stay up, because I’ll be able to sleep till a more Godly hour. Six is too early.

I have so much energy right now it’s hard to make myself sit still. But what am I going to do with this new energy, vacuum? I think not! Instead, I post.

Over the weekend I attended a banquet at the OWFI writer’s conference. The Saturday night banquet ends the conference, and that is also the night they announce the winners in the annual contest. The last time I won anything was 1st Honorable Mention for a confession story, of all things, in 2000, and I wasn’t even there to receive my certificate. I don’t enter every year—I’d say I’ve entered maybe three times since. No winners.

The good thing about entering the contest is getting feedback from the professionals who volunteer to judge. I’d forgotten to put postage on the return envelopes, so that meant I’d have to pick up my entries in person. Which meant I might as well lay down $40 for the banquet.

Well, I’m glad I went, because I actually won something. My first novel, Ea’s Gift—the one that landed my former agent—took 3rd place in the fantasy novel category!

I’d entered it five years ago, before it was completely finished (they only need the synopsis and 1st 30 pages) and the judge slammed it, but apparently he slammed all of them, because on his blog he lamented the terribleness of the entries. Yes. Publicly. He’s a fairly well-known writer now, of novels and screenplays, though he wasn’t big then.

So anyway, a finished, polished Ea’s Gift got much more helpful comments. I think it helps when the judge enjoys your sub-genre, too, since Fantasy is such a large umbrella with too many different styles under it. Go visit Ty Drago. He’s got taste. Also, he’s a Quaker. I like Quakers.

I got good comments on Black Veil Angel as well, but the judge felt it shouldn’t have been entered in the YA category. That hurt the score. You know what’s funny? I had just put this judge at the top of my new agent query list for BVA, but I didn’t realize she was the judge for my category. I guess I don’t need to bother now.

My short story, Mon Petit Ami, didn’t get any comments but the score was in the 80-89 range, out of a hundred. She had a huge number of entries, so I don’t hold it against her.

I feel validated, which I really needed, but I still don’t know what to do with these stories. I’ve been looking at small presses and at self e-publishing and at agents. I’m feeling pretty creative, so maybe I’ll just write for a while.