If you read Regency novels (not just romances) you will run into the
term ‘Repairing Lease’.
As in, “I saw Dick Rackham yesterday.
He told me he is going on a repairing lease. He’ll be back when The Season starts.”
The term means that the subject is taking rest and relaxation in a
quiet place. Perhaps it is because Mr. Rackham gambled too much and his
pockets are to let. Perhaps Mr. Rackham
was jilted by the lady he wished to marry, and his heart is broken. Or perhaps Mr. Rackham is simply worn out by
times, events, worries, concerns and projects and, in modern terms, has
realized that he is spinning his wheels and needs to rest.
Whatever Mr. Rackham’s reasons for the move, Miss Wilder begs to inform
all that she is going on a ‘Repairing Lease’ for two months. She hopes to be back in April. She will try to participate in
IWSG.
She hopes that her absence will not offend, worry or puzzle anyone. She has simply realized that her strength has
run out for the moment and she needs to catch her breath and close her eyes.
This is the Celebrating the Small Things blog hop, run by Lexa Cain and her two wonderful co-hosts L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Tonja Drecker @ Kidbits.
Quite a few years ago, in a late afternoon on a Friday, I was driving along an interstate highway and minding my own business when I noticed that a vehicle behind me kept coming awfully close and once or twice nearly did not stop when traffic slowed down. He was in a hurry, and while he was not ‘tailgating’ me, he was staying very close. Two times, three times traffic stopped and I held my breath, watching in my rear-view mirror as he closed the gap and stopped…but just barely.
The drive continued, traffic stopped – and the fellow behind me crashed into the rear of my car. It was a heavy hit, and I was stunned for a moment. I collected myself reached shakily for the papers in my glove compartment. Documents that you fill out in the event of a crash. My car was up against a cement divider. I had not yet unbuckled my seatbelt. I reached for the papers, turned toward the door with my hand at my belt’s buckle-
And the divider jumped at me and jerked sideways just as I was about to open the door.
What had happened is that we had stopped, and another vehicle, coming along behind us, plowed into both of us, slamming my car forward and to the side. If I had stepped outside, as I had intended, I would have been killed.
I stepped out of my car and saw both men emerging with cellphones plastered to their ears. They were talking into their cellphones. I took mine from my purse – where it belonged while I was driving – and called the police. “Can you see police lights up ahead ma’am?” the bored voice asked. I said that I was the front vehicle in a multi-car pileup (‘you unmitigated nitwits!’) and they needed to send someone quickly.
So, the accident. My car was a total loss. It was a heavy, full-sized sedan, the top of the line. And its safety ratings were very high, one reason I had bought it.
Well, I wasn’t hurt badly, thanks to seatbelts, the Ford Motor Company and my delay in exiting my vehicle (one reason why I am posting this in the Celebrations Blog Hop). But one very bad thing did happen: most of my prized CDs were splintered.
A family member gathered them in a bag, and there they sat, in my garage for years.
Recently, I was getting ready to take a long drive up into what the U.S. calls “New England’. I saw a pile of CD cases sitting on a shelf, and went over to them. Well! It appeared that not all my CDs were destroyed. In fact one of my favorite musical CDs was there, a group of performances by pianist David Lanz.
As I drove along, I remembered the CD and put it in the player. The first was called Christophori’s Dream (Christophori being the inventor of the piano) and the second being a piano rendition of Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale.
I listened and smiled. The magic was there. It being celebration time, I will share with you. Christophori's Dream, performed by David Lanz:
A Whiter Shade of Pale:
They certainly livened my drive, and I'll be delving into that bag again. And the Bouquet: I happened to see this on a sponsored forum on a vendor of my books:
Does anyone know anything about the next Memphis book - I was told the title was to be KADESH?
How could I not answer? I wish I had seen the query sooner:
I apologize for the lateness of this response, but I saw your question just now and owe you a response.
Family issues delayed the release of Kadesh. I am working on it at this moment with a projected release date the end of this year. I will be releasing another Egyptian story, set a little earlier than the Memphis Cycle, within the next two months. This is a fable, and is a shorter story. The title is THE THIRTY CUBIT CROCODILE, and you can find information about it on my website, which is www.dianawilderauthor.com
And you can imagine my smile when I read this response and saw that someone had ‘liked’ my post:
You can join Alex J. Cavanaugh and all the other writers who support each other, make us all smile and think in this monthly hop.
No one is mocked or sneered at.All are welcome.We have all been there:
First of all, congratulations to the writers selected for the anthology!It should be really good! And…using this as a segue to my Insecure Writerly post…you are all so very very lucky that I didn’t submit for it because I am such a truly fabulous writer, one of you poor folks would have been bumped out of your slot!
I would never say that, of course.Based on my observations, it would not necessarily have been true.But the notion does touch upon a strange contradiction I’ve seen in myself and in other writers.I’d call it the ‘Rather Odd Dichotomy of Abyssmal/Sublime’.
Don’t we all think, in our heart of hearts, that we are really good, heartfelt, talented, gifted, sincere and dedicated creative writers?I don’t know if I’d phrase it that way, exactly, but I think somewhere deep down we all think we’re really good.We have The Gift.We can Tell Stories That Enthrall.(Well, they enthrall me, at any rate).
But, really, think about it.You all know you’re good and gifted.
And yet at the same time, we just know that if we put our precious creations out there, they will be ripped to shreds and somehow, in some weird way, we think that maybe, just maybe, we deserve it.
Wha--?
Okay, that’s weird.But – and here is my deep, dark secret that I am offering up – I find myself goofing off, checking eBay, looking at the news, following links to interesting places, fiddling with Pinterest—
Hold on, you say, what’s wrong with that?
Well, because I have sat down (hundreds of times) with an idea for a scene that I am going to write, by golly.Most recently, it’s two chapters, to be salted in my WIP, that introduce a new angle to the conflict that the character is having, and heightens the element of danger.I jotted my thoughts, blocked some things out, got some feedback from a friend who is perhaps the best, most honest editor I’ve ever had.It’ll make the story flow, it had scope for humor and danger and a touch of intrigue – Who IS that fellow??? – and I sat down, fiddled with Pinterest and GOGMSITE. (I digress here for a moment: anyone who writes historical fiction with a European slant and is interested in researching female costume/fashion should visit www.gogmsite.net/It is a wonderful resource, full of images and run by someone who needs to be awarded something. Perhaps being named ‘Dame of the Empire’ or something.)
So…Did I write the scene?Well, I did crank out a page once I looked at the clock and squawked.But I could have written the whole thing and fiddled with it the next day.And I didn’t.Why not?
Well, maybe because that would bring me closer to finishing the thing and having to show it to people who might laugh at it or pull it apart or sneer at it, or something.…and maybe they would be right?
Does that lie at the bottom of our shyness?That while we know we have The Gift, we fear that it won’t be obvious to others.Or they will rip us to shreds?Or sneer at our work?
But, truly, how often has that happened?How often have we done our best and had it destroyed by criticism?For me, at least, not often.I’ve had some pointed suggestions, some observations ‘You know, you use a lot of sentence fragments…It does tend to divert the reader from the flow of the story…’
I don’t do that to others, and I only had one person do that to me.She was in Preditors and Editors as an ‘Avoid at All Costs’.Based on my information from the post office, she opened my envelope, scrawled a note on the manuscript I’d sent for her review, and stuffed it back in the mail within half an hour of receiving it.Everyone else has been constructive, if somewhat stern.Stern is nice.
I’ll be on the internet this evening reading Insecure Writer Posts.Then I’ll spit out that chapter, which will bring me closer to finishing the WIP.I will start sounding people out for beta-reads.
There.That wasn’t too hard. (I feel so much better!)
