(See the winning entry list here.)

All the Way to Mystery

by Stacy Clark

The waves come and come. Don’t give in, don’t give in, I silently whisper. I run down the suburban path, wending beneath the leafy oaks. Tripping on snarls of roots bursting up through the asphalt, I do not fall. Not this time. I run on. To the pace of classic rock.

Some days the wind is at my back, nudging. On this day, I am running into the wind. Waves of sweet, spring air coming at me as I push toward, forward, against. It is harder. Often. Lately. Don’t give in, don’t give in, I silently whisper like a mantra deep inside.

Around the bend, crepe myrtles in bloom. A gust loosens a shower of color. Pinkish petals fluttering like butterflies, only falling down. Don’t give in, don’t give in. Let the beauty take you all the way to mystery, I whisper to the sleeping part of my soul.

Silence is my superpower. So, I hope, is following beauty.

Silence is awkward for a writer, who writes about life.

For a mother who encourages her daughters to speak up.

For a woman with a diagnosis she can only run toward, not beyond.

The difference is in one letter. “A” means acute. An all-out, immediate battle to the other side. “C” means chronic. A wait in the shadows for what is gathering like a coming storm. I am grateful for the “C,” and yet, living into something can be hard to explain.

Living in a palm-lined Florida suburb, I raised two daughters. When I came home that startling day, the daughters still lived with us, a high schooler and a young professional diverted by a pandemic.

“You have to tell them. Tell them now,” my husband insisted after meeting me in the driveway with a shaky smile.

He called them down from their bedrooms into the kitchen. But what would I say?

My older daughter knew what to say. “Mom,” she explained when I told her, “It’s like nothing has changed and everything is different.”

At first, I told a few friends. The sister of a brother waved it off with a story of how he survived. The nutritionist gave me nutrition. The born again gave me God. The optimist brought optimism. One friend brought coffee. She arrived on my porch with to-go cups in hand, and we sat outside on the back lanai and looked at life without blinking.

Quickly, I went silent. I was fine. Nothing had really changed. Except I drove fifteen minutes down the road to Moffitt Cancer Center for a blood check every three, and then six, months. Except a friend texted me every Sunday to see how I was, even if I was fine.

Life carried on. I ran half-marathons. I celebrated birthdays. I said goodbye to the daughter moving away for her job, the daughter going off to college, the dog that had been here for all the growing up. I went back to work for an ad agency downtown.

Everybody went back to life as usual, with the rare exceptions.

Before one appointment, I meet a friend, the kind of friend who marks her calendar and invites me for coffee before I go to see if my blood cells have picked up speed. She and I sit sipping warm coffee at a high-top table and, fine as I am, I tear up. Silence had made fear fall into the background. A quiet brewing, unnoticed, unreal. Talking makes it real. My friend says hiding fear is like trying to keep a beach ball under water.

When it is time to go, I tell her I have to pull myself together. “You can’t cry on the way into Moffitt,” I say.

She laughs. Wonders why. Says, “There’s a story there.”

Why not cry? Because Moffitt people are caring, from the cheerful valet to the smiling greeter who directs your lost-looking self to the Hematology Department. If you cried, I think, they would care like a four-alarm fire. But more so, if I am honest, I do not want to be noticed. I do not want to be cared for. I do not belong in this story.

Belonging is the heart of this story.

No longer am I the heart of my family with two growing lives spinning around me. No longer am I making lunches, driving carpool, reading stories in small beds tucked shoulder to shoulder as if we had all the time in the world. Where do I belong now?

When life is pulling you toward the daily responsibilities of motherhood, there is scarce time to ask about belonging. To wonder what life is asking of you. I went from childhood to adulthood to motherhood. What hood am I in now?

There are wayward cells at the deepest part of me. There is loss at the heart of me. The me that wrapped my days around mothering. The juggler of school papers and dentist appointments, art classes and piano lessons. My daughters used to call me “The Great Scheduler of All Things.” Now they tease I am “The Not Very Good Scheduler of Much.”

When I left my younger daughter on the sidewalk beside her newly stuffed college house, I felt as if I had been mugged, and they took everything. Here on the empty margins, I have had to face myself head on.

Unbecoming. Rewilding. Surrendering. The story travels these unfamiliar grounds.

When you are running toward a storm, even on a sunny day, everything has changed.

Silence is no superpower.

Some days feel like bailing sloshing emotions out of the emptiness so I will not sink.

One day, a friend tells me she went looking for wild ponies on an island. She found pony hoofprints and pony poop so fresh it was still steaming. She did not see a single pony.

She poetically decides this is faith. The evidence clear, the mystery remains unseen.

What am I looking for? Her wild ponies make me think of rewilding golf courses. Where the fairways and the greens are left to revert to their natural state. The wildlife returns.

Now that my children are grown and I am running toward the storm, I like the idea of rewilding. Though I am not sure how wild I can get on a cul-de-sac in suburban Florida.

That night I dream of a whole herd of wild ponies galloping toward me.

I read that some golf courses get turned into Super Targets, and I wonder if it is better to try and stay who we are. Being a fairway is better than a parking lot.

Small miracles, small miracles, I remind myself in silent deep-down whispers.

I cannot see the edges.

Beauty in all its rawness and nowness is the only place I have found I am able to stand. I tell myself, if things get bad, I will get a tattoo on the inside of my wrist, delicate, almost indecipherable script meant only for me saying: Beauty all the way.

I believe in beauty. Except at Moffitt.

The first couple years, I went into Moffitt head down, tucked away. No beauty there. Only something invisible ravaging human life, and life, and life. Hope wafting like ragged flags as families pushed wheelchairs, held hands and held tight.

I did not belong in this story.

Nearly four years have passed since I embarked on this unchosen journey. As fine as I am, the Sunday texts and the pre-appointment coffees unfailingly continue. During one of these coffees, my friend says with a smile crinkling the corners of her eyes,

“There’s beauty at Moffitt, you know. Even there.” “No,” I quip. “Where have they been keeping that?”

Maybe in the painted stones of the flowerless garden outside the front door. On my way into Moffitt right after this beauty conversation, I see the stones. A leave-one, take-one offering of stones painted with hearts, stars and words of hope. Silent messages saying I see you, I know you, hold me in your hand, I’ll go with you, as far as we can go. I pick up a stone with the word “Hope” and wrap my fist around it, hidden in my pocket as I wander through my appointments.

When I leave, I set the stone back in the garden. A few days later, when I return for a follow-up, I put my own painted stone in the garden. Hot pink with rays like a sun. I’m no painter, yet it has its charm.

I never go back to see if anyone picks up my stone. This is not that kind of give and take. You give, and what happens next is not up to you.

Recently, a friend gave me a book, a YA novel, purportedly lighthearted. She is the one who came with the to-go coffee, but she is innocent here. The main character is a sentient typewriter, helping a family solve a mystery. How dangerous could it be?

There, in the end, I am crying softly as the family solves the mystery of a missing mother. They drive all night and find her high up on her rock of safety. She has run away from what has returned to her body, what she fears will take her family down this time.

The relieved family entices her down from her rock, they wrap their arms and love around her no matter what comes. And they know what is coming.

My snuffles and sleeve wipes carry on after the last page. I slip into the bathroom to avoid my husband, daughter and tear-licking dog on the couch catty corner to mine.

The sobs go on for a good twenty minutes. It’s a typewriter for Pete’s sake.

It’s this. When I run for safety, will my family come and wrap around me? I am afraid they will find me. I am afraid they will not look.

That startling day I stood on the sidewalk at Moffitt, minutes after the doctor had gently, matter-of-factly handed me a diagnosis, my brain clouded with thoughts. I did not know what would happen, how good, how bad. The most actionable thought: Do not go home.

The valet took a while to bring my car. Even I knew, even then, I could not run away from me. I could not find safety on a rock. But the desire to flee was like a mother’s need to push her newborn into the world—volitional and not of her say. The only handhold I saw was truth. The known and unknown, felt and not felt, set forth and apart. Squinting into the sunlight on the sidewalk, I vowed to stand there. I vowed to not turn away.

Holding out for truth led to silence. I could not bear the push for positive thinking, the cheer handed out like candy. It slayed me. Still does. I feel guilty. As if I have somehow failed to think my way out of this. Positive thinking feels like chasing a butterfly.

Beauty cannot be chased.

After all these coffees, texts and runs, I have learned there are rocks in a secret garden hiding in plain sight. I have learned, sometimes, in the stillness, beauty finds you.

Like on a run into the wind when the petals fall across your path.

Beauty comes in its own time. Disguised in the dark.

Heading to my most recent appointment, I drive up to Moffitt. Inching through the valet line, with rogue cells in the marrow of my bones, I am spontaneously singing along to AC/DC. Head-bobbing, voice-screeching, body-wiggling singing. When George Thorogood’s Bad to the Bone comes on, I smirk and eye the sky.

There are times I give in to the waves of despair. I can feel them, those wayward cells elbowing out the healthy ones. I keep running toward, because it is better than away. Truth always gives back. I do not want to miss the beauty no matter its duck and cover.

Slowly, though, I am beginning to put my faith in the story I am, in the wild mystery coming at me like a butterfly, like a galloping herd.

When I can, I surrender, which is not the same as giving in. More a waking of the soul.

Beauty carries us forward.

I am hoping it can take me all the way home.

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Now write a description of a good day of writing for this writer, a day where she finally breaks down, surrenders to the work, and gets lost in it. What’s that like? Write a description of it in such a way that someone who has ever experienced it might understand the pleasure of getting lost in what you’re writing. Write a description for people who think writing is boring, whose only memories of writing are of drafting term papers on subjects about which they weren’t interested. If you were telling a story about a writer who wasn’t writing, this description would be crucial. The reader would need it to truly understand the protagonist’s struggle. For this story to be compelling, you would need your reader to want your hero to write, to do this thing that makes the writer feel so alive.

Return to the first description and find an instance from this writer’s life where she experiences the same resistance in a different part of her life. Perhaps your writer isn’t writing because she worries about “getting it right” and always feels as if she comes up a little short. Write a description of as many scenes as possible in which she feels this way about cooking, or running a marathon, or parenting her children. Really pile it on. No one ever experiences something in just one area of her life. If you worry about getting things right while writing, you probably always worry about getting things right.

I used this exercise to break myself of what I call the “should habit.” For years, I used the word should to force myself to do things I didn’t want to do. I would think, You should pay those bills, or You should mow the lawn. I did it almost every time I had a chore, and I quietly believed that my life would be better if I had a manservant to take care of the mundane tasks so I could fill my days as my heart desired. I was certain my heart would never want to mow the lawn.

Except, as soon as I heard that word should in my mind, a rebellion stirred in me. I was split in two. Half of me was a child who believed he just wanted to play, and the other half was an adult who believed he would be happy once he completed his list of chores. By and by I would do whatever had to be done, but not until I had delayed a little, thereby lodging my protest with the authorities. Or, if I was feeling particularly stubborn, I would do what had to be done but would refuse to enjoy a single moment of doing it. I would check the clock or think constantly of the thing I’d rather be doing.

It took me about twenty-five years, but I eventually saw the connection between the word should and a mild grumpiness that often infiltrated my days. And so, every time I noticed myself thinking should, I would stop and think instead about why I wanted to do what needed to be done. If the lawn was overgrown, I would think about how much I enjoyed a freshly mowed lawn, how meditative mowing can be. My mind drifted as I pushed the mower, its engine creating a pleasant white noise in which my imagination could operate free of distractions. Plus, the difference between a mowed lawn and an overgrown lawn is so clear, so unambiguous. I can see that difference, that contrast, with every swath I cut.

The same practice can be used for writing. Remember: You are built to avoid unpleasantness, not to suck it up. All writers who aren’t writing are rebelling against some injustice or another. The practice here is replacing one story with another. First, pay attention to the movie you see on the screen of your mind when you imagine yourself writing. Is it a movie that depicts your suffering? If so, use your writer’s imagination to tell a different story. You’re a writer, after all. You change stories all the time, and you don’t write stories you dislike. If you picture writing, and you begin to see the story of your suffering, stop that movie and picture a good day of writing instead. After all, you don’t know what’s going to happen the next time you write, do you? And some days you do get lost in the work. So why tell the story of something you don’t want to happen? Tell yourself only what you want to hear: how effortless writing can be, how much you enjoy being lost in it, how alive and on purpose you feel while writing in this way.

Practice this again and again, both when you’re writing and when you aren’t. Practice every time you repeat that suffering in other areas of your life, too. Your mind-set won’t change all at once—you need the experience of changing the story, of stopping that movie, running a different one, and then noting how different you feel, how eager you are to do what only a few minutes ago you were dreading. How miraculous! How ordinary. How absolutely possible.

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(5 Tips to Work Through Procrastination)

10 Habits of Highly Effective Writers

1. Read

Yes, this really is about writing. So, I mean it. Read everything. Authors can get so swept up in our core writing, feeding the ravenous social media beastie, and schlepping hither and yon for signings, that the window for reading narrows into a gunslit blocking all but a ray or two of literary sunlight. Focus on your subject area, but also broaden your tastes. You’ll have a deeper reservoir of tropes and details in which to dip your quill. Refreshing your inner author with invigorating reading will help prevent your style from becoming stale. The evocative power of reading is what inspired you to write in the first place, isn’t it? Stay connected to that wellspring of fresh ideas.

2. Manage time

When will you write? Before work, or after? On the weekends, or during the week? One hour-long session each week? Longer? More often? Be very specific with yourself, especially starting out, about the time you will commit to writing. Log and track your hours if you need to. Act like your own unreasonable boss. A few weeks of practicing mindful diligence will teach you how many pages you can produce in a given time period, and help you understand how to set and meet your goals. One thing effective, productive writers do not do is wait for inspiration. They go looking for it on a schedule, usually finding it very close by their computers or tablets.

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3. Set goals

You somehow knew that was coming, didn’t you? Set goals you can easily achieve. Set the bar low, then lower it even more, so you always step away from your writing session with a success, with a win, with progress. Whether you commit to two pages a week, or to twenty-five, as I do, make sure you get your pages done. If work, family, or any other facet of life glints you into distraction, stay up a little later that night, or get up a little earlier next day, so your goal is achieved. Fast or slow, stay on track like a freight train.

4. Manage space

What kind of writing space do you need to be productive? In the past, I sometimes wrote in busy cafes. For a time, I wrote between calls in the map room of the Montclair Ambulance Unit where I served as an EMT. Later I rented an office at C3 Workplace, where the only sick people were the characters in my head. Now I happily work in my home. Find or create the right space, the feng shui, the décor, and the soundscape that helps you do the work before you.

5. Set boundaries

Family and friends must get used to the idea that your writing is important to you. It requires time apart from the folks you love best, and who love you dearly. Repeat as kindly, and as firmly as you can that whatever else your roles in life might be, you are also a writer. Writing is not your hobby. It is not something to do to pass the time while waiting for folks to be available to distract you. Honor your calling. Honor your loved ones. Demonstrate a passionate devotion required by this consuming commitment to your people, and to yourself. They might grumble now and then, but they will get used to it. They will also share in your pride of accomplishment down the road.

6. Finish

Complete your drafts! Don’t be the writer with that over-edited first chapter that’s been spun into absolute gold, but has nothing readable following it. I had a chance to hear Professor Charles Stegeman tell his Haverford College painting students over and over again to cover the whole canvas right away, then go back to polish the details. Was I painting then? No, I was modeling for the class, naked as a jaybird, and still as a stone, so I heard this exhortation plenty. By the end of every class, I also saw the wonderful results. Some days, yes, I warm up for writing by rereading the last couple of pages from the day before. Sure, I might toss in an easy edit or two. Then my daily goal beckons me forward into mysterious new territory, ever onward to completion of the draft. Now please stop thinking about me naked. That was many cheeseburgers ago.

(8 Tips to Build Your Supportive Writing Network)

7. No shopping

I learned this from my father, short-story author, and novelist, Joseph Whitehill. Do not shop your story ideas. Tell not a soul. Keep your thoughts secret. Say nothing until that first draft is complete. Don’t fear your idea will be lifted and plagiarized. That is possible, but unlikely. There is another kind of thief much closer to home. If you try to beguile and fascinate your family, friends, or lovers with the precious coin of your creativity too soon, it’s possible you will vitiate and squander that soul-twisting impetus to get it all down on paper. Ignoring my father’s advice, I regaled this friend, or that object of my desire, with some very juicy plots. Didn’t I have to justify calling myself a writer somehow? These cool plots were ample proof I was the genuine article, right? Wrong. It had the opposite effect on my output, and on my self-esteem. On more than one occasion I awoke the next day to discover that I could not even remember what my grand idea was. It was gone, leaving only a smoky, taunting wisp of a notion behind, like a half-forgotten dream receding into oblivion. To make matters worse, no one to whom I blabbed ever asked how that idea I confided had turned out, or when it would be published. Sit with that agonizing hot clinker of story burning in your gut until you’ve written it all down. Then, tell your friends. Hell, tell the world, because now you’ve earned the right.

8. Cultivate your team

In addition to helping your loved ones understand how important writing is to you, you will need a few folks in your corner with specific roles beyond missing your face while you are holed up at your work. Your committed listener will field your emails or calls about how you are sticking to your page count goals every week, or even every day. Your editor, as Richard Marek (Robert Ludlum’s editor on the Bourne series) did for me, will tell you the truth about your work, and offer suggestions on how to make it better. Your proofreader will give your manuscript that polished, professional look, as Suzanne Dorf Hall does for my stuff. You will need a cover artist to make your book leap off the shelf into a reader’s hands, as Studio042 does for my work. Perhaps you need an agent, or a manager, like my indispensable friend and confidant, Liza Moore Ledford. Whether you opt for independent publishing, or a legacy publishing deal, you will need a brash, dazzling PR team to help the world find you. For that, I go with Shelton Interactive every time. Find the people, the companies, who understand your work, and who are committed to your success not only as a writer, but also as an author.

(14 Tips for Nurturing Your Creative Spirit During Challenging Times)

9. Love your readers

I don’t mean that you necessarily should have warm feelings for your readers. Real love is not just a feeling. It’s a job description. For the sake of argument, let us imagine a reader can comfortably tackle one page of a book every two minutes. This imaginary reader has an average heart rate of 70 beats per minute (except during the riveting parts of the story where that rate better shoot up. A lot.) So, that 400-page book will take about 800 minutes to read, or around fourteen hours for those of you playing the home version of our game. More to the point, that means your reader expends at least 56,000 irretrievable heartbeats on your work, out of a finite allotment of 2.25 billion lub-dubs. Put that way, you can see this is a truly enormous commitment. Honor and appreciate your readers’ investment by doing your very best work. It cannot be about the money for you. Be sure that your readers’ time feels well-spent, and not a pointless sacrifice.

10. Communicate

Be available to your readers. Give them an email address where they can reach you, confident of your eventual reply. In addition to doing your best work, this is how you build a community of devoted readers. It may sound tedious, but after writing my first book alone for so long, I found that meeting and hearing from readers—my very own readers—made it all worthwhile, far outweighing a considerable financial return. Some writers might believe that good work is all that’s due and owing to one’s public. Now you know I disagree. In addition to hearing from readers, you might find yourself fielding questions from other writers in need of advice. This is a great compliment. Offer what thoughts you can. Be the author you wished you could talk to when you were starting out. As evidence of my sincerity, I can be reached at rbw@robertblakewhitehill.com. It would be a pleasure to hear what you think of my Ben Blackshaw Series, or to answer any questions that come to mind.

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#1

You’ve published six books through FaithWords (a division of the Hachette Group) since your debut novel Chasing Lilacs was released in 2010. How has the Christian/Inspirational Fiction market changed in those six years and what new trends are you seeing?

It’s a whole new era!! When Chasing Lilacs was published, it was considered a “hard sell” in the Christian market because of the child protagonist, the time frame (1950s), and the subject matter. I’m so grateful that FaithWords took a chance on me when romance, Amish, and suspense were about the only things being pubbed in the Christian marketplace. Today, a wide array of genres abound, and like in the general market, the publishing options boggle the mind – Indie publishing, small presses, and e-publishing in addition to traditional routes. Also since my debut came out, several Christian publishers have been bought by the larger NY houses, and a few others have stopped acquiring fiction, so it’s a landscape that is ever shifting (and dizzying for me!).

Although romance and suspense still reign, there are more crossover books that resonate in both the inspirational and general market, and it’s a slot that suits my books well—stories where moral truths and old-fashioned values prevail. Another trend I’ve noticed is more authors working together to create anthologies and multi-volume sets of related stories built around a central theme. Bundling an authors books and work-for-hire aren’t new concepts, but this particular flurry seems more Indie and small-press driven and is giving authors more opportunities to get their work in the hands of readers.

Many, many options today.

#2

To what do you attribute the growing market for Christian/Inspirational Fiction?

I’m always a little stumped by this question because most of my life I’ve read uplifting books with elements of overcoming, justice being served, or redemption, but they weren’t labeled as Christian or inspirational. They were entertaining and provided an escape into places I’d never been alongside fictional characters who lived lives different from mine. I don’t think that has changed—readers still seek stories with hope and satisfying endings to fill the void of fear and uncertainty that our world offers today. They long to escape into places where drama and adventure make way for a better world. Inspirational fiction provides that, and with so many options available, there’s something for everyone. I’ve recently heard that even the general market is trying to tap into readers’ yearnings for “clean” stories. I’m not sure if that answers your question, but it gives me hope that humankind still holds onto noble values and principles. A lot of my readers like that they can share my books with children, grandchildren, and their neighbors and not be embarrassed because of content and/or language.

#3

How do you stay in touch with your readers and in tune with what they love to read?

Great question! I have a love/hate relationship with social media but as a writer, I know it’s a necessary part of being accessible. I do try to share both book and real life snapshots via various social media outlets. My favorite way to stay in touch, though, is through personal appearances and speaking engagements. I generally have several events for each of my books in areas where I have a faithful following. They, in turn, help spread the word of my books and recommend me to other groups (tea parties, launch parties, women’s luncheons, Rotary, book clubs). I find that reading tastes vary when I ask what they like to read, and I nearly always make a recommendation of an author that I’ve recently enjoyed.

[5 Important Tips on How to Pitch a Literary Agent In Person]

#4

What historical periods do you find most interesting to write about and why?

I’m definitely a twentieth century lover. No wagon trains or antebellum hoop dresses for me. I’m drawn to the eras of my parents and grandparents – the people who’ve shaped my life directly. I’m fascinated with their technology, fashion, and coping mechanisms and often picture myself in their shoes. Writing about their time periods helps me process who I am and is my attempt to answer the life questions that daunt me. I’ve written three novels set in the fifties and sixties, and while I don’t like to think of them as historical, they are to many of my readers. I prefer to call them love letters to my coming of age. I’m currently obsessed with the 1930s and the upheaval of our country during the great depression. An urgency churns in me to capture my dad’s memories while he’s still around to share what it was like growing up in the dust bowl.

#5

What’s the most difficult plot or character challenge you’ve encountered in your writing and how did you muscle through it?

Plots give me fits. Every time. And it’s usually because my characters go rogue somewhere in the story and don’t follow my carefully crafted scene list that leads to that perfect climax and resolution. Muscle through? I’m still learning how to do that. Listen to the characters. Give them real flaws and yearnings and disappointments. Once I’m in tune with the characters, the plot elements generally click together. Mostly. By this time, I’m usually staring at a deadline so I write really fast for long periods of time, and that’s when the magic happens. Those worrisome threads that have been elusive work themselves out, and I realize the plot points were there all the time. It’s no wonder people think writers are crazy. And truthfully, I wouldn’t have it any other way!

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