What 2020 Taught Me as a Writer and as a Person ~ Part 2

Cynthia Ruchti

Traveling for conferences and speaking for women’s retreats rank high on my list of joy-bringers. Zap! Overnight the plug was pulled. I cancelled so many flights that Delta wrote to tell me they missed me. I’m a bit worried the gate agents with whom I’ve built relationships at our small regional airport will think I’ve forgotten them. I hope when travel resumes for me, they’ll remember our deal—that 52 pounds of luggage can easily round down to the max of 50.

I did not lose anyone close to me due to COVID. I lost them before COVID. I did not lose my job, although I lost a chunk of irretrievable income. I did not have to vacate my home. Home was and is a haven. I won the battle with my own bout with the virus and kept breathing. Although I did lose my sense of taste and smell and they are very tardy in returning, the little scamps. I didn’t miss a meal because we couldn’t afford food. The only meals we missed were the ones I didn’t feel like making. I was drafted into service as the homeroom monitor for two teen grandsons, but I may have enjoyed the role of encourager and snack provider a little too much.

We’re still here. We survived with our health relatively intact. We’ve enjoyed the extra togetherness…for the most part. My luggage has been grateful for the stay-cation. And the books did release.

So, tackling a topic like this—What 2020 Taught Me as a Writer and a Person—humbles me. I didn’t have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death but still learned more than a few life lessons. Among them are the revelations of:

· Things I once took for granted—coffee with a friend, lunch dates with my sisters, hugs, having a chef or cook or hamburger flipper or anyone else but me make supper, breathing air not filtered through cloth.

· Things I once wasted—slightly shriveled carrots, potato skins, that last square of you-know-what on the cardboard roll, leftovers I threw out because we were tired of eating the same thing, moments (so many moments!).

· Things that can’t be shaken—faith, the blessing of a good family, peace that isn’t dependent on circumstances.

· Things I know now—that freedom is not hindered by borders or restrictions because true freedom is internal, that it’s not a right but a privilege to have two packages of paper towels in your cart at Sam’s Club, that much of what we call hardship would be better named inconvenience, and that words and story have no boundaries even if they have to be communicated virtually or on yellow legal pads.

· Things I’ll remember when I write—that the pain or losses I imagine for my characters are always minor compared to some readers’ real losses, that the stories we tell matter because for some readers 2020’s distresses were blips on the radar of what they face every day, and that we—authors and readers—are more resilient than we realized.

Years ago, a friend and I adopted a policy for handling crisis of any sort. Actually, we didn’t so much adopt it as agree to it. God invented the policy millennia ago: Adjust and trust. One without the other does not a saying make. Or a good plan.

When disappointments rain down like Agent Orange…

When crises just won’t…stop…coming…

When upheaval is the catchword of the day…

When expectations dissolve like bath fizzies and leave a nasty stink rather than a sweet smell…

When what we get is the opposite of what we hoped for…

When prayers not only go unanswered but seemingly unacknowledged…

When nothing looks or feels normal…

When you realize normal is too much to ask…

When you can’t see the end of the tunnel’s darkness…

When uncertainty crowds out every optimistic thought…

Adjust and trust.

Businesses, restaurants, schools, families pivoted. When it came down to the option to adapt or to fold, most adapted. But pivoting is only part of the code for surviving life’s disappointments and devastations. Adjust and trust. Adjusting can weary us. It’s hard on body, mind, and spirit. Trusting fuels us.

What did 2020 teach me? I have a feeling most of its lessons are still on the horizon as I keep adjusting, keep trusting, and keep writing to those who need to renew their confidence in the truth that they can’t unravel if they’re hemmed in hope.

Cynthia Ruchti is the award-winning author of more than 30 books, including the novels Afraid of the Light, Miles from Where We Started, As Waters Gone By, Song of Silence, A Fragile Hope, and They Almost Always Come Home. Her books have been honored with more than 40 readers’, reviewers’, and retailers’ awards, including Romantic Times’s Inspirational Novel of the Year, four Selah Awards, and five Christian Retailing’s BEST Awards, and has been a finalist for many others, including the Carol and the Christy. Former president of and current professional relations liaison for American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), Cynthia lives in Wisconsin and can be found online at www.cynthiaruchti.com.

What 2020 Taught Me as a Writer and as a Person ~ Part 1

 

Cynthia Ruchti

“We’re in this together.” I remember saying those words often this past year. Crisis seemed to pile upon crisis. For most of the year, every news report was more grim and gruesome than the one before. Not only were people dying, but they couldn’t have their loved ones near in those final hours—no touch, no whispers of forever love, no sweet assurances and sing-you-Home lullabies. Not only were schools shut down and parents evicted from their offices and sent home, but nearly every parent became a live-in teacher or at the least a homeroom monitor almost overnight. Teachers, doctors, emergency staff, business leaders, and scientists—all scrambled to keep their ships upright, their charges calm, and their heads above water.

Not all succeeded.

“Small talk” turned into “large talk.” How will we ever make this work? How can we stay safe? How long will this last? How will we survive if—gulp—a first world country runs out of toilet paper?

But we were in it together. And together is almost always better than alone.

I’m trying to imagine anyone’s life that wasn’t upended at least in some way by the global pandemic. It reached even the remoteness of Outer Mongolia…and I’m not kidding. The US sent ventilators to a common euphemism for “the ends of the earth.”

To say that we’ve all been changed is an understatement.

One would think that someone like me—an author who is quite content spending most of every day with her fingers on the keyboard, moving words around, playing with ideas in relative solitude in not exactly in Outer Mongolia, but in the Northwoods of Wisconsin where we think we can see it from here—would find her life only mildly affected by a global incident. Or that my daily routine wouldn’t change all that much.

Drink the coffee. Boot up the computer. Sit. Think. Type. Repeat. Throw in editing, social media, and an occasional meal and bathroom break. Repeat again.

But I was changed…and not just because we were frugal with toilet paper. Changed. And so was my writing. Come to think of it, I’m still in the process of processing, and almost daily make adaptations to the way I do things and the way I approach life, love, and the privilege of being a writer.

That’s one of them. The reminder that writing is a privilege. It’s a privilege to live in an era and a country and a home environment where writing can continue no matter what’s swirling around me. Even if all that were left to me were the dozens of yellow legal pads I keep, though I no longer use them, and the colored pencils I saved from when my kids were in grade school (my grandkids are in high school now), I could still keep writing. For me alone, if not for readers. For what I learn and how I grow when I tell stories.

I was one of the oh-let’s-call-it-privileged who had/has not one, not two, but three books releasing “in a time of COVID.” A novel in June of 2020 (Afraid of the Light), a novel in March of 2021 (Facing the Dawn), and a nonfiction in the fall of 2021. Among my favorite author activities are visiting and supporting bookstores, popping in to book clubs, holding author events in libraries, and meeting readers face-to-face wherever I can…which during that time was virtual or not at all. Virtual is better than nothing, but that’s what life had been reduced to. “Better than nothing” had turned into “the most we can hope for.”

Did it affect my enjoyment of those glorious release days? Enjoyment wasn’t foremost in my mind. What mattered was readers. Were they able to receive their pre-orders? Did they hear about the new release? Did they feel like reading again? So many have felt the tug of books but no energy to lift the cover and read. I sympathized with the “can’t read” reaction but admit that I wanted to lay my six-feet-distanced arm around the shoulders of those people and whisper through my mask, “But the best place to retreat from the rigors of survival is under the covers of a good book.”

Cynthia Ruchti is the award-winning author of more than 30 books, including the novels Afraid of the Light, Miles from Where We Started, As Waters Gone By, Song of Silence, A Fragile Hope, and They Almost Always Come Home. Her books have been honored with more than 40 readers’, reviewers’, and retailers’ awards, including Romantic Times’s Inspirational Novel of the Year, four Selah Awards, and five Christian Retailing’s BEST Awards, and has been a finalist for many others, including the Carol and the Christy. Former president of and current professional relations liaison for American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), Cynthia lives in Wisconsin and can be found online at www.cynthiaruchti.com.

Sensory Overload

By Cynthia Ruchti

Tonight, I heard the haunting warble of a loon. Would I have caught it if I’d been engrossed in emails or social media? If I’d filled the silence with my own noise? I heard because it was a stark, bare sound against a quiet backdrop in this lodge setting where I’m sequestered for the week, the construction zone at home exchanged for serenity.

Can our writing suffer from sensory overload? From noisy words?

Jackhammer words pound at the readers’ subconscious reading experience. Their repetition draws attention to the construction zone rather than the story in which the reader is supposed to be immersed.

            Sarah made a cup of coffee. The coffee burned her tongue, but she let it. Coffee or tea?    Maybe she should have chosen something other than coffee today, given the way coffee always raked her stomach.

            Or:

            Sarah pulled the mug of French Dark Roast from her Keurig. The first sip scorched her tongue. She deserved it. Was coffee the right choice? How long had it been since she’d made anything other than a wrong decision? Too long. Her second sip stripped the lining of her soul.

Humming words can mark passages of dialogue as amateurish, like radio static rather than a clear signal.

            “So,” he said, “do you…uh…do you come here…often?”

            “Ah, well, um, yes,” she said.

            Or:

            He cracked a roasted peanut shell between his thumb and forefinger and dislodged the single peanut kernel inside. There should have been two. The empty cavity reminded him why conversation hadn’t gotten past his, “Do you come here often?”

            The woman with the disarming smile leaned toward him. “Yes. I do. Every Thursday night.” She brushed the peanut casing onto the floor where it joined its friends. “And I like to dance. If you come next Thursday”—she slipped her purse strap over her shoulder—“make sure your heart knows if it’s ready for dancing.”

Buzz saw words are the literary equivalent of gnats, mosquitoes, or June bugs flapping against a screen door—unpleasant and arguably unnecessary. Buzz saw words are noisy neighbors. The real conversation is in there somewhere, but drowned out by the noise.

            The sun rose, of course, on the day she’d dreaded. And as a matter of fact, she’d dreaded it for weeks now. But the sun acted all proud and gutsy, as if it didn’t care one whit that in a few hours, in fact, less than a few hours, she’d sign away her right to be what every woman she knew wanted to be, except for the few who didn’t—a mom.

Consider this adjustment:

            Proud and gutsy, the sun rose on the day she’d dreaded. Where were the heavy gray clouds, sullen and foreboding, that should have marked this morning when she’d sign away her right to be a mom?

Listen to your current work in progress. Is it suffering from sensory overload, from a too noisy environment? Does the core of your story have to shout to be heard?

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Cynthia Ruchti tells stories hemmed-in-Hope through award-winning novels, nonfiction, devotions, and speaking events for women and writers. She serves as the professional relations liaison for American Christian Fiction Writers. She is the author of over 16 books. Her recent release is A Fragile Hope from Abingdon Press Fiction. You can connect with her through http://www.cynthiaruchti.com, http://www.hemmedinhope.com,or through  facebook.com/CynthiaRuchtiReaderPage  or twitter.com/cynthiaruchti.