Friday morning I sat down at my laptop to work on my novel. Folks, I was at 83,902 words, and yet I couldn’t get a single thought on the electronic page.
I’d type a bit, then delete. Type and delete. At the end of two hours I had 83,899 words. Yikes! I was going backwards. Studly Doright called around 9:30 a.m. to ask how the writing was going, and I just laughed.
He said, “Take a break.”
I reminded him that the last time I took a break from working on this novel it lasted seven years. This time, he laughed.
I went back to the WIP (Work in Progress) and sat staring at the screen. I picked up the book I’m currently reading and let it carry me away for a couple of chapters. Sometimes that gets me unstuck, but not this time.
Finally it was lunch time. Okay, it was only 10:30, but close enough. I put on some eye makeup and my mask (the one with books and a cat on it) and called Sweet Pea Cafe to order their daily special. I sat in their parking lot eating a sweet potato wrap with a side of hummus and veggies. So good.
Back home, I checked the mailbox and there was an oversized envelope addressed to me from my good friend, Flo. But not addressed to JUST any old me, to this me. Author me.
This little psychological boost was enough to give me a kick in the pants and I ended up writing over a thousand words that day. Flo, thank you!
The clippings she sent were ones Flo had found while going through her late sister’s memorabilia.
I remember reading about this woman who claimed to be Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, the youngest daughter of Russian Tsar Nikolas II.
According to Wikipedia: Anastasia was the younger sister of Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, and Maria, and was the elder sister of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia. She was murdered with her family by a group of Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918.
And yet many people believed that Anastasia somehow escaped the fate that befell the rest of her family and made it to the United States where she lived out the rest of her life. I need to reread the whole story. There are several movies about the young woman, at least two are animated.
Thanks to Flo, I not only got a boost for my writing, but much to ponder. If I ever get this thing finished and published, she and Studly get mentions for sure.
Peace, people!
Praying for Eyebrowz 
Mark Twain said the 83,903rd word was always the hardest. Write, write, write!
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And here I thought it was the 83,904th. Thank you!
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enjoy your posts. I am a writer who has taken a break. do you use your blog posts as a way of getting into the process?
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Thank you. I started the blog because I was lonely. We’d just moved and I knew NO ONE! But I’ve found that blogging forces me to write something every day, and that’s got to be good.
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love your personal comments. life can be a challenge. a break is sometimes all that is needed.
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Thank you!
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Oh I love this. 🙂
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Thank you!
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Oh my …what a post on every level.Firstly dinnae worry re your word count. Tt is never the amount but the quality. We just kid ourselves re that amount till we know it is in the bag and we are over the line. Now the Romanovs… Fascinating. As was the Anna Anderson story. The thing was she fooled a lot of people plainly never thinking either ..and this is the bit I still marvel at…. that one day the bodies would be found. For me that’s the story. I have a ton of books on her, on the various theories, the lot, all written, before these remains were found, roughly where the original testimonies always aid they were., which is another interesting thing in terms of people hear and process what they want to.
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Wow! My friend Flo is fascinated by this. What books do you recommend on Anastasia?
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There is one by Peter Kurth, the life of Anna Anderson. Sometimes it is just called Anastasia, or the Riddle of Anastasia. There was one I read way back called the field on the Tsar by a journo..a quite reputable one called \Tom Mangold .. I still have it and it is fascinating in that him and this other guy took the official account to bits. They even found evidence that the family ..the girls had survived .. But again that was all before the official graves turned up. I think what is good is to read abook written re Anna before these graves were found, then find one written since. There’s also ton of stuff online. Also Google Franziska Schanzkowska who Anderson was pretty well certain to have been.
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Thank you! I’ll pass this on to Flo. It is all so tragic and yet fascinating.
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Yeah. I think cos it is so tragic ..and I say that not being remotely the kind of person to like rulers. I remember the first time hearing about it way back during a prog about the Russian Revolution . I got this book in the library. I was googling there to see if it was still around but I guess not ( I see similar ones but the wrong author) and it was photographs of the last few years of their lives. So I got quite fascinated and of course now mysteries have been solved but you see other stories there, like that Anna Anderson one cos they say you can fool some of the people etc but she fooled a lot until her death and she must have been confident the remains would not be found. Then there’s the eye witness accounts from Perm about how the women were moved there. What were these accounts really about when they weren’t?
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Mysteries still. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like to have lived that life of privilege and then to be slaughtered.
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Me neither. xx
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I rememeber reading that the oldest daughter could have been married and out of it all but she’d chosen to be with her family. The 3rd daughter, Maria, there was this kind of what amounted to a rescue attempt, her and her parents. They went separately to Ekaterinbourg cos the others were ill. Anyway it was never quite clear who the guy in charge of taking them worked for but he was caught, well off course with them eventually.
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I guess the whole line had to die off for the revolution to succeed. It seems so harsh to have killed off the little ones, but that was how it worked. Is it any wonder Putin still has enemies killed?
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Brutal times .. still are. x
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True enough.
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Perfect timing!
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It definitely was good timing. Thanks!
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That is such a subtle but epic way of handing out some recognition. I absolutely love it!
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Flo is so good at doing things like this. Sending cards with snapshots from better days. She has lifted my spirits more than once.
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💗you got this
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Fingers crossed.
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💗💗
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Happy Mother’s Day ❤️
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Good for Flo and for you.
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She’s the best kind of friend.
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