The Book

When I asked Klara to help me with my book, this was not a line. This was the truth. I still need help with it but less so now, as I feel more confidant about it. It is in better shape now than it was a month ago, so if someone asks to see it, it will be more prepared.
Which prompts the question of when something such as this is actually done. Books are an enormous amount of work, so much so that at some point you start asking yourself if the game is really worth the candle. I am to the point now with the first book that it is difficult for me to even look at it any more, let alone enjoy it. I could do some more work on the sequel, but even that is starting to get on my nerves. Which is why I need a diversion.
I mentioned before that I am waiting. What I am waiting for is a response back. This is the really hard part. As much as doing the book wasn't easy and then getting the manuscript in shape was difficult, so too is it practically impossible to not want to rush the process at this point. Which is what gets a lot of people in trouble.
This is why you need a diversion--something else to do. At one point I was doing so much work on the book--because it needed it. Now I've gotten to the point where I need a response--because if I don't get one, that means this isn't going any further and I need to start making alternate arrangements. I can hang, but it's not easy. I see now why some people don't ever want to finish their work--because then it's away from you, much as a child that grows up and moves out on his or her own. Empty nest syndrome. If I can get something going on the first book, I'm sure my interest will pick up again in the second.
Klara was helping me with the book by sitting next to me, following along as I read it outloud. Then she would take a turn reading outloud and would write down words that were unfamiliar to her in her notebook and I would correct her pronunciation when she needed it. A little less than a hundred pages into the book, there's this scene where Carolyn seduces Brandy, but no on-camera sex, so to speak--it's all fade to black. That's when I felt Klara pull back from the book.
We skipped to the end just before she left, but by then the book starts getting complicated, when the subplot merges with the main story, and then just following what was happening became a problem. By the time I got my we're-too-different kiss-off from her, she wanted nothing more to do with me or the book.
She told me her last relationship had been long distance, with her last boyfriend living in Sweden when she lived in the Czech Republic, and maybe she didn't want to go through that again. The nice drive that we were having that one morning when we went to Hobe Sound beach, she did make one comment to the effect that she was going to be leaving soon anyway. I suppose me coming along with her was out of the question or didn't even occur to her. But then I wouldn't have been here to do all the work that I have gotten done. Such then is the mess.
But Carolyn's happy, right? She's got her boyfriend and her time on the island in paradise, so that's all that matters. Again, I'm left holding the bag.
But I can't complain, because I know that there are so many people who wish they could do what I've done and they just can't, for whatever reason. It's easy to fall into the trap of being bitter. I'm not going to do that.
At one point, after reading a part in the book that she liked, Klara asked me about my spirituality. She told me she believed in reincarnation. I countered that if you do believe that, then you have to also believe you're here to do something. I told her I was here to do books and I asked her what she was here to do. She said she hadn't figured it out yet. I told her that was fair.
I know it sounds awfully corny, but when I did the ending for the first book, I felt as though I had done something that I had been born to do. If the book is just for me, because there is nothing out there that it really resembles, then that's what I need to know. We shall see.