Tag Archives: impossible dream

Living History

Posted on March 23, 2012 | 10 Comments

I realize that I am in to some pretty different stuff.  (stop right there and get your mind out of the gutter!)  But it’s always fun to stop and contemplate what you would do with yourself if you had unlimited money.  And I’m talking unlimited money.  You never have to worry about it running out or where it’s going to come from.

Here’s what I would do with my unlimited money.

No, seriously, this is what I would do….

Have you ever watched those PBS reality shows?  You know, like Manor House, Frontier House, Colonial House, or my favorite, Regency House Party?  Have you ever been to Colonial Williamsburg or Plymouth Plantation here in the US?

I would build a high-end theme park/sleep-away camp for nerdy adults like me.

First, I would buy some land.  A big tract of land, mind you, probably somewhere in Pennsylvania.  It would need to be sort of remote but also easily accessible from Philadelphia and New York City.

Like Louisa May Alcott's house, which I've visited.

Then I would build a small town of historic-style buildings there.  I would probably go for some Colonial style buildings, some Federalist style buildings and some early and late Victorian buildings.  I would construct them as they would have been constructed in the 19th century.  In other words, no electricity and no modern plumbing.  But I would have special buildings within this town that did have all of the conveniences of modern life … on the inside.  On the outside they would look like the other historically accurate buildings.

Then I would invite people to come stay for varying lengths of time.  We would all live as if we were back in any given era of American History.

But it’s not quite that simple.

You would have to register to come stay in this village for any given length of time.  Then there would be orientation.  During orientation the guest-participants would get a lesson in what it was like to live back in the era in which we’re living (it would change, by the way, but I’ll get to that).  These initial lessons would be things like how to put on a corset the right way and what social rules in any given time period were.

Then the fun begins.

Who wouldn't want to dress like this for months on end?

For months at a time the village would operate as if it were a living piece of history.  Guests could come and go depending on the length of the stay they booked.  There would be scheduled activities every day to learn various aspects of history through living it.  People would learn how to dance, handicrafts, how to load and fire period weapons, horsemanship, all the stuff people did in the 19th century.  And there would be social events too, dinners and dances and concerts.

The time period of any given stretch in the village could change from season to season, year to year.  Every day news would arrive of what is happening in the world at that time.  If we were having a Colonial period there would be news of goings on with the Continental Congress or Washington’s armies and the like.  If we were enacting the Federalist era there would be reports of the great men and activities of the day.  If we were living during the Civil War you know parts of the conflict would seep their way into our lives.  And so on and so forth.

There would also be staff.  Yep.  These specially trained servants and working-class townsmen would be college kids doing internships for various universities.  They would receive academic credit for partaking as the workforce of this village.  They could also be the instructors too in some cases.  There would be a whole army of them there to give credibility to the environment.

Of course there would also be modern emergency facilities tucked away in all this.  There would have to be a modern medical clinic, although it would also be fun to have people try out historic cures.  Well, at least the ones that are still legal.  So no laudanum.  And there would have to be communications and transportation readily available.  But that can be hidden fairly easily.

Then there would be my house.  It would have every modern convenience, of course.  I mean, I have to have a computer to write with, and since I would be running the place there would be a lot to coordinate.  You need technology for that.

Yep, this would be the life.

But for everyone else, it’s all about the authentic experience.  I think that’s why people would want to come: to experience life in another era, or at least as close as you can come to it.  Granted, unlike the PBS reality shows I think I would allow modern deodorant and other hygienic necessities.  And I would probably sneak a bathhouse with showers in there somewhere for when people get tired of historical bathing.  But anyone who wants to keep it as authentic as possible would be encouraged to do so.

Yes, I know this would take a seriously large amount of money.  In fact, I don’t see that it would necessarily be sustainable.  But who knows.  It might.

So are you coming to visit my historic village?  If you come, what era would you want to visit?

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Posted in History

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How Old is Too Old to Run Away?

Posted on March 9, 2012 | 15 Comments

When I was a kid I had this fantasy about running away to England.  I mean, I really, seriously wanted to run away.  To England specifically.  When life got miserable, and believe me, my childhood was seriously miserable at times, I would daydream about how I was going to do it.

Part of this fantasy, of course, involved setting off without telling anyone.  I didn’t just want to move to England, I wanted to disappear to England.  I wanted to go without taking anything with me and without telling anyone where I had gone.  I’m sure that all came from some sense of wanting all the people who were so awful to me on a daily basis to wonder where the heck I’d gone, maybe to get a little worried and send out a search party for me.

The reason I never went was because I was smart enough to figure out that there are some inherent problems in just disappearing to a different country.  For one thing, you would have to take cash.  Credit cards are traceable.  Passports are also traceable, and you can’t enter a foreign country without one.  I toyed with the idea of somehow getting a fake passport, a new identity.  I think I even came up with a few false names for myself.

In the end I never went.  I didn’t have enough money.  It always came down to money.

So here I am, almost 38 years old.  What is my biggest secret fantasy?  What do I sit around and daydream about?  What do I plot and plan and do mental gymnastics to figure out the logistics of?

Running away to England.

Oxford as photographed by me.

I had my first trip to England in the summer of 2010.  I went with my cricket team to Winchester and Oxford.  A lot of completely and utterly life-changing things happened to me over those eight days.  A LOT.  Oxford was beautiful.  Walking through the cobble-stone streets of a university that has been operating for a thousand years, finding myself in nooks just out of earshot of motor traffic and looking up to Medieval buildings, actual Medieval buildings, all around me sent chills through my bones.

High Street, Winchester. Home of the best pasty EVER!

Walking down the High Street in Winchester was even more soul-shaking.  I felt like I was home.  I wandered through Winchester Cathedral as though I knew every stone, had felt every ray of sunshine before.  I touched Jane Austen’s gravestone, sat outside the house that she died in under a tree in front of a wall that she may have looked at while she dreamed.  I drove around Hampshire feeling like I’d never seen anything so beautiful.

I’m not sure about reincarnation, but if it’s the real deal then I know I lived in Winchester hundreds of years ago.  It hasn’t changed much.

I want to go to England.

Profoundly.

But here’s the thing.  I have debts.  I have stuff.  I have cats.  I have a job in the good old U.S.A.  I don’t have a job in Winchester or Oxford or Derby or anywhere in the U.K.  I’ve gone online to see about getting a work visa and basically you have to jump through a lot of hoops and already have a job with a U.K. company to even apply for a work visa.  You can, however, get an artist’s visa if you’re, oh, say, a writer with an independent income.

The problem is that I’m not.  Yet.

Beautiful Hampshire!

Then there’s that voice that says to me “You’re too old.  International moves are for college students and people who’ve just graduated.”  Of course I also know that’s not true, but that’s the same voice that tells me I have too many debts in American dollars to pick up and move to the original side of the pond.

And yet, that’s where my soul is.  I’ve been told by several people that I’m British at heart.  In fact, 20 years ago, long, long before I’d ever set foot on English soil, a South African friend told me that I was more English than most English people he knew and that if I ever went to England I would never go back.

In a way he was right.

But can you really just pick up your life, leave behind your debt, your job, your family, your friends, your house, and your cats and make that change?  Is there a statute of limitations on following your soul?  Or does the evil specter of money make returning to your heart’s true home nothing more than a dream?

Another reason to love England: Pubs!

Once again, credit cards are the reality check in my desire to run away to England.  Only this time I’m not as concerned about people tracking me by my credit card use as I am paying of a dollar balance with pounds.  I’m sure there are ways to do it, otherwise no one would ever move internationally.  And there’s still the nagging issue of the non-existent, good-paying job and visa I would need in the U.K. to make this fantasy work.

Plus Kristine would kill me and Stewart might never forgive me.

Then again, if they ever move to NYC, like both of their careers lean towards….

So what do you think?  Do you think I could do it?  Do you think 38 is too old to make a 180 and change your life entirely?

Me and some cricket friends on a stop while punting on the Isis.

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Posted in Slice of Life

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How I Became A Writer

Posted on February 13, 2012 | 33 Comments

Here it is, folks!  In honor of ORIGINS Blogfest (a fabulous idea created by DL Hammons which hundreds of writer/bloggers are participating in today) I present you with my origins story – how I became a writer.  Or rather how I knew I was a writer.

I’ve included the one sentence version of the story in many a bio I’ve written:  I have been a writer since I was 10 years old and realized one day that I didn’t have to wait for the teacher to assign a creative writing project to write something.  But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Three year old Merry & her Granddad

I was in third grade.  It had been a rough couple of years for me.  My dad had walked out on us when I was 6, we moved halfway across the country to live near my Mom’s family, my Granddad (who had become a beloved father figure) had passed away very suddenly of a heart attack, and when my dad remarried he took my two older half-brothers (his sons from his first marriage) away to live with him.  Trauma!  I was struggling in school that year too.  It sounds so silly to an adult, but my best friend from second grade had been put in a different classroom than me.  I also had to learn long-division, which nearly killed me.  Everything pretty much sucked far more than your average ten-year-old deserves to have things suck.

My third grade teacher was Mr. Morley.  I adored him.  One day we were given a creative writing assignment.  I don’t even remember what we were supposed to write, but I ended up writing a story about a girl who made friends with and probably fell in love with a wasp (yes, a wasp) named Michael Greer.  Now Michael Greer was a boy in my class that I had been in love with since he kissed me in first grade.  This was the first instance of me making a character out of someone I knew.  I’m sure it was also the first time I used fiction to express and work through my emotions.  There was probably some deep psychological meaning to the fact that I would write a story about myself falling in love with a wasp (I was and still am to this day completely terrified of wasps) named after a boy I had a crush on.

Well, when we did these creative writing assignments in third grade we generally read them aloud to the class after they were graded.  I still remember Mr. Morley asking to speak with me at recess.  He was very tactful about saying that while he liked my story he didn’t think I should read it aloud.  I knew what he was talking about and agreed.  Thank you Mr. Morley for helping me to dodge a bullet that would have meant third grade social suicide!  I loved him even more.

Young Merry coming up with ideas to write about

But this first critique of something I had written got me to thinking….  I had written a story and enjoyed the process of writing it, and even though I had handed it in to the teacher it hadn’t been read aloud like the rest of the class’s stories.  So that meant that not everything I wrote would have to be on display for my class.  And if I could write something for a class that then wasn’t shared, who was to say that I couldn’t then just write something for myself alone to enjoy?

That’s when I started writing.  Granted, I didn’t do it a lot, just every now and then.  Until something else coincidental and wonderful happened when I was in fifth grade.  My Mom took a job as the secretary of the elementary school that I attended.  When she was cleaning out the office she found a bunch of old school supplies that no one wanted.  One of these items was a small spiral-bound three-subject notebook.  I asked if I could have it.  She said yes.  For the first time in my young life I had in my possession the tools to write as much as I wanted.  This was a notebook that wasn’t earmarked for schoolwork.  It was mine to do with as I pleased.  I believe I wrote another story in which a boy in my class who I had a crush on fell in love with me.  And I think there was some time-travel involved too.  Either way, the tide had turned.  I was a writer.

I have boxes and boxes of spiral-bound notebooks with stories I started, ideas I’ve had, and boys I’ve had crushes on.  I suppose I was always meant to be a romance novelist at that.  Those notebooks lasted up until I got my first computer.  I have a few ancient floppy disks with stories on them (that may never be able to be recovered).  Nowadays I have a flash drive with everything I’ve written for the last five or so years.  But really, it all goes back to those heavy, obnoxious boxes of spiral-bound notebooks that I’ve lugged from apartment to house to apartment to state to state for the last 25 years.  And yes, I still have the original notebook.

I was born to be a writer.  It’s as simple as that.  And I’ll be a writer until the day I die and then some.

[Medieval Monday will return next week as I begin an exciting new series on Awesome Medieval Technology!]

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Posted in Slice of Life, Writing

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I Need A Hero

Posted on November 16, 2011 | 6 Comments

I’ve always wondered if the deep, subconscious reason I love romance novels so much is because by their very definition Romance as a genre has happy endings.  Part of what defines a romantic story as being a Romance is that the hero and heroine get together in the end and have a happily ever after.  The heroine is empowered and the hero is, at heart, a good man, even though he might start out as a scoundrel.  It’s a wonderful, beautiful worldview.

Unfortunately, it’s a worldview we don’t seem to see much of in reality.

I wonder if the reason I have always loved romance novels is because within the first decade of my life my happily ever after was shattered.  My parents were divorced because my dad cheated and left us for “her”.  My very first hero turned out to be a dud.  I developed agoraphobia, which is pretty much the polar opposite of feeling empowered.  Life was a struggle from that very early age.  Then I discovered this world, this genre, where heroes were strong and faithful and noble, where the heroines were able to stand up for themselves and get what they wanted in life, and where everyone got what they deserved in the end.

Happily ever after.

There comes a point in all of our lives where we realize that our heroes aren’t perfect.  It doesn’t matter how highly esteemed they are or how charming or noble or altruistic they may appear on the outside.  Everyone has faults.  Everyone has bad days and makes bad decisions.  It’s just the way humanity works.  But there’s a world of difference between a genuine hero who makes a bad decision now and then and someone who has been set up to be a hero who never deserved to be lauded in the first place.

What bothers me is when people fail to realize the difference between a true hero making a mistake and a false hero getting called out for what they really are.  The former is sad and disappointing because we, as humans, want so badly to believe in heroes.  The latter is a cause for anger because that false hero willfully duped everyone into thinking they were better than they were.  But far too often we, as humans in our own right, react to both cases the same way, with fury and shouting, with pitchforks and torches.  It hurts us that the people we wanted to believe in are just fumbling along like we are.

I’m thinking of a particular instance of a hero gone wrong that was very much in the news last week, especially if, like me, you’re from Pennsylvania.  I don’t want to invite controversy so I’m not going to mention this person or the event outright.  And I would ask that you, my dear readers, refrain from commenting directly about that whole event.  But I feel like the reactions and outcry to the situation was a perfect example of what happens when we lose faith in a hero.

We want to believe that if we have a hero they will be perfect across the board.  The problem is, humans are not perfect.  At least not in reality.  In a real world of moving parts, gray-areas, and uncertain motivations mistakes are bound to be made.  What worries and saddens me is how quickly people rush to tear down the same people they have put on a pedestal in the first place.  And not reasonably or with compassion either.  We tear people to shreds.  We vilify them in every way.  We crucify them.  This has been going on for over 2000 years.

But we need to believe in heroes.  It is the optimistic heart of every one of us that wants someone to look up to, someone to revere and to emulate.  Whether we’re religious or not, we need gods.  I think they give us hope and teach us about life.  In a perfect world those people are our parents.  But parents are people to.  I wonder if a portion of the anger that people felt towards last week’s fallen hero was born out of a disappointment in their own parents for not doing more, for not keeping them safe from the world.  I still remember how much it hurt when I realized that the one person who should have been protecting and nurturing me more than anyone else was the root cause of all of my suffering.

Which is why I love romance novels.  It’s why I think that literature and the arts are so important to us.  Sometimes the best heroes, the ones who are the most reliable and teach us how to be, are the heroes between the pages of books.  These are the heroes that show us what love is, what nobility is, how to sacrifice your own desires for a greater goal.  Yes, you can argue that literary heroes are not real, but the values they espouse are.  Having just this weekend watched Sense and Sensibility, I would rather look up to Edward Ferrars and his determination to do the right thing and stick to his secret engagement with Lucy Steele, even though he recognized that it was foolish, even though he knew in meeting Eleanor he had met the love of his life, as a hero than just about any living person the media has set up as a hero.  Edward stuck to his guns and in the end he got what he deserved.  I don’t think the same can be said for the people we put up on pedestals in the real world.

But real or imagined, the onus in hero-worship falls on our shoulders.  We, the average people looking for a hero, have to keep our heads when humanity strikes.  We need to react with compassion and mercy and not pillory anyone who disappoints us.  There is a world of difference between the imperfect hero and the villain masquerading as a hero.  We need to use discernment when we deal with each and not let our personal disappointments bleed into situations where they don’t belong.  But most of all we have to remember the good old words “Judge not lest ye be judged.”

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Posted in Slice of Life

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A Writer’s Journey – Part Two: The Darkest Hour

Posted on August 16, 2011 | 10 Comments

So.  I am a Capital-W-Writer.  Awesome!  The moment in which I made that declaration and changed my fate forever came and went.  And I wrote.

What did I write?  Oh, bits here, pieces there.  I started a few things … heck, I started a LOT of things.  But did I finish anything?  Oh no.  No, no, no, no, no!  There wasn’t time to finish anything.  Well, I’ll use that as my excuse.  In fact, there wasn’t inspiration to finish anything.  Funny word, inspiration.  It’s from the Latin for drawing things in, like air into the lungs.  So yes, technically I had plenty of inspiration.  It was the expiration where I had problems.  I claimed that it was impossible to write without being moved by a deeper force to get things out on the page.

And so I wrote in fits and starts.  Lots of fan fiction too.  I never finished anything.  Years and years later, a decade even, after declaring myself a Capital-W-Writer with a loud YAWP I still hadn’t finished a single novel.  And don’t get me started on short stories or poetry.  They’re a thousand times harder for me than novels.  But I sit here now having finished seven novels and, inshallah*, within a week or so of finishing an eighth, submitting to agents with a book I’ve slated to indie publish at the end of September.  What happened?

I’ll tell you what happened.  I had my heart broken.  BADLY.

I dated Brent for six months.  Well, no, technically I dated Brent for three months but he forgot to tell me he broke up with me for another three months until I called him on it.  It was bad.  I was devastated.  I thought I was going to marry him.  I was 33 at the time and I considered myself an old maid.  My Mom was married at 32, so….  And guess what.  He started dating someone else less than a month later.  And guess what again.  They were engaged by Christmas.  [insert profane diatribe here]

Just when I had gotten over my heartbreak salt was rubbed into my wounds. *cough*bastard*cough*  I had a good cry and went to church the next morning feeling like the last dusty, dented can of cat food pushed way back into a corner of the shelf, unwanted.  Now, I like to go to church early because there is a period of quiet time with special music before the service starts.  I sat down, miserable, lonely, and just let my mind relax.  I wasn’t praying, I had no agenda, I just wanted to sit there and crumble in peace.

And then, I kid you not, a question popped into my head.  Not from me either.  The question was, “If you had to choose between having a perfect, loving relationship with a man but never being able to write another word ever, which would you choose?”  And before the question was finished being asked I knew my answer.  “I would choose WRITING!”  And the reply echoed back as clear as my cousin’s words on that brisk October afternoon.  “THEN WRITE”.

I kid you not.  I went home after church that morning and started writing what eventually became my first novel, The Loyal Heart.  I wrote every day, three hours in the evening when I got home from work and at least five hours each day on the weekend.  Granted, it was the dead of winter and I had no social life to speak of, but within a month and a half I had written 250,000 words of awesome.  Okay, not awesome, but good.  And then I found out that romance novels are generally no longer than 100,000 words long.  Oops.  (I have since cut The Loyal Heart down to 119,000 words.)  And what did I do after I finished that one?  I wrote the second book in the trilogy, The Faithful Heart.  Yeah, it was (and unfortunately still is) 200,000 words long.  Talk about inspiration expiring all over the place!

I also snapped out of a deep, dark funk that had lasted for eight months.  And I thawed my heart.  And I found my soul.  I remembered that I am a Capital-W-Writer.

Now I’m 37 and still single (dammit!).  But I am happier than I have ever been.  I’m in love, in love with an imagination full of lives and stories.  So what do I do now?  Well, when you’re brimming with this much love there’s only one thing you can do.  Share it.

But how ….

(to be continued)

*The term “inshallah” means “God willing”.  It’s a Muslim phrase which I’ve picked up from some of the guys on my cricket team.  It has a beautiful ring to it.

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