Returning to Broken Love

Good Morning Everyone. I hope you had an enjoyable weekend. Please note, this is an unusually long post today. I have a lot of ground to cover.

So, today's topic is Returning to Broken Love. You might ask what Broken Love means -- I'm talking about getting back together with someone who's broken your heart. Devastated you.

I don't do it. Ever. Have never. Will never.

There's something about the physicality of a broken heart. Now I know that when someone breaks it, it doesn't really fall apart, but it sure does feel like it. And I'm not talking about high school broken hearts, I'm talking about real true adult broken hearts. (And I've never been married, so I can't speak for what happens in a divorce. This is from a single woman's point of view.)

When you think you've found the "one". You are giddy and in love and everyday is Heaven on earth, there is no other person in the world who means as much to you ever. There is the promise of something "more", of a lifetime together, perhaps. There are years invested, and friends and family, vacations, commitments.

And then, he does something so inconceivable that you just can't believe it. He breaks your heart.

Let me tell you about Richard. We were incredibly in love. He was a chef, I was a restaurant manager, we started dating and somewhere around the two year mark we built and opened a restaurant together, almost from the ground up. I helped with everything, from ordering to hiring, cooking, waitressing, building, picking out tile, redecorating. You name it, he cleared everything through me before he made the final decision. We had our first opening night and invited 100 of our closest friends and clients. It was magical. Things couldn't have been better.

We had our second opening night for the community at large. I was there already greeting guests, serving drinks, when he walked in with another woman. A woman I knew from town. A woman I had no idea he had been seeing on the side, while I had been slaving away helping him with the restaurant.

I literally heard my heart snap in half. After the initial shock, and the dead silence of having the customers watch me to see what I would do, (because it was a small town and everyone knew us as a couple) I walked out of the bar right then and never looked back. Sure he called, and tried to explain, and cried and begged me to come back, but I refused to even take his call. Two months later, the gossip killed him and he lost the business.

I was bereft for about 6 months. Really. I lost almost 30 pounds. I refused to see my friends. I was totally humiliated. I cried ALL the time. I lost a part of myself that I couldn't get back. I swore I would never fall in love again.

Cut to Nevada 10 years later. I started a relationship with Terrence, but I never let my heart get completely involved. I was very leery of the whole "love" thing. But then he was accused of a crime he didn't commit and he asked me to stand by his side, to support him. So I did. Our relationship changed after that. (I knew he didn't do it, and the judge ruled he didn't do it. It was a set-up.)

Sitting in a diner, having a turkey sandwich with my best friend, I realized I was in love with him. I denied it, of course, because I wasn't ever going to be in love again. But there it was. So I committed to him and the love. To make a long story short, 3 months later he told me he was in love with someone else. My best friend.

Yeah.

But she wasn't in love with him. They tried dating, it didn't last 6 months, and she married another guy. Of course he came begging back to me and I turned him on his ear.

The reason I'm discussing this topic today, is that my ex, Monster Child's father, has come back to North Carolina. I'm not going to get into the where-for's and why's about our break-up, it's just too ugly. But it did get me wondering why I won't get back with him.

People change, absolutely, and he has, for the most part, done a complete 180 from where it was that broke us up. But, throughout the last 8 years, he's broken my heart more times than I can count. I gave him chance after chance, because I did love him with all my heart and he is my daughter's father and I thought a family should really try.

The last two years without him around have been hard on The Monster. She loved her Daddy, and now he's back, she's over the moon. And I never wanted to take her away from him, but he was just so damned toxic. He was killing both of us, the three of us, so I made him go.

But now he's gotten his shit together and I'm happy for him. I like the fact he can come over to my house and we can have a civil conversation instead of screaming, or crying or throwing things. I have made peace with my ex. I have to get along with him, he is my daughter's father. I have forgiven him (for the most part) of all the things he's done to me. But I will never forgive him for breaking my heart.

He's asked, The Monster has begged, why he can't move back in. Why we can't be a real family again. How do I explain to my 6 yr. old about broken hearts. About losing trust and hearing lies and the damage it causes.

Once my heart is broken, it takes a long time to heal. And mine has so many scars on it right now, it's held together with super glue and duct tape. Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't fall in love ever again. That's a whole other blog post. What I'm saying is, I won't attempt to rekindle a dead fire. I won't ever get back together with a man who's broken my heart.

Tell me -- How about you? Would you, or have you, gotten back together with someone who broke your heart in a major way? Or is once it's over, it's over?

Drum Roll Please

As of 11:32am on Monday morning, I finished my manuscript. TA DA! I totally blew off all the stuff I was supposed to do and sat down and finished it. I cried like a baby, yes I did, when I wrote those two little words. The End.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to each and every one of you who have given me support over the last few months. I could not have asked for a better cheering squad than you guys. This blogging community is so full of awesomely talented people and I wouldn't be where I am today without all of you.

I can now help my mother with a clear conscious. lol. I'm taking the rest of the week to do all the things I didn't do on Monday, and will hopefully start on edits next week. I've been revising as I've gone along so there isn't much to do in that sense, however, I've got those nasty line edits. I think those are the most time consuming.

I will also be making my way back around the blogs to visit. I've been so busy trying to get this ms. done, I've neglected you all and I'm sorry. But you all know how it goes. The writing comes first.

THANK YOU again, so much for your kindness and support. It really means the world to me.

Now, I'm off to unscrew the cabinet doors for Mommy Dearest. I'll see you all on Friday at the Grille.

Love you!

14 Hours

I sat on the computer for 14 straight hours Saturday. Yep, you heard me, 14 freakin' hours. 7:30am - 9:30pm. I was on a roll. The word count went from 80,0823Fri. night to 85,946 Sat. night. (And yes, I did take breaks to feed and water the Monster Child. She wasn't feeling all that swell so she mostly laid around upstairs in bed.)

I was almost finished. All. Most. Finished. Probably 3000 more words. Maybe 3, possibly 4 more scenes. But, I stopped. Well, yeah, I was like wicked tired, but still wired, you know. I re-set my clock and went to bed.

I took a break on Sunday. I cleaned the house. I did some laundry. I gave away three years worth of Monster Child's clothes to a man who lost his wife and well, you know how that goes. I raked some leaves, I picked up a bunch of downed limbs. My mother came over with the dog and we dissed my sister-in-law again. Never touched the computer. Didn't even look at it.

At 1am Monday morning, Monster Child woke me up out of sound sleep crying because she couldn't breathe. (Stuffy nose. Oh yes, spring has sprung. Thanks tree pollen.)
I gave her medicine, waited until she could breathe again and lay there in the dark until 5 freaking 30, thinking about my story.

Everything that I wrote on Saturday, isn't going to work. Yeah, it's pretty good if I do say so myself, really full of tension - angst - anxiety. Poor Ellis. Poor Violet. But I have to go even further back than that. I would say the last 20,000 words aren't going to work.

I've lost the original premise of the story somewhere along the way. I mean, it's sort of there, but Lady Olivia is really playing much too much a role. It's convoluted, murky, muddied up with too much pop and wow. I was trying to make every page, every scene zing. I was listening to what I've read, you need to have tension on every page. Yeah, you know what, no, you really don't.

This story is not an action/adventure/suspense/thriller, it's a love story. A basic simple love story. Yes, there's tension, angst, and anxiety, people get hurt, lies are told, hearts are broken. If you only knew what I put poor Ellis and Violet through. Sorry, I can't tell you that.

So, I probably won't be around for the rest of the week. I really want to finish this and I was sooooo close. God, that's frustrating. I've got to go back in and find where I took that first wrong turn.

Question -- Have you ever done this? I mean, found where you went wrong right before you finished? Revisions are one thing and totally a whole beast unto themselves - but have you ever gotten almost to the end and realized you screwed up?

Friday's at the Piedmont Grille

On Today's Menu -- Quesadillas, Sudo'hone, Shrimp Lo Mein, and just for giggles, The-Two-Guys-in-Vermont-who-make-that-ice-cream Cherry Garcia.

I know, I have an eclectic sense of taste today. Goes along with the week I've had.

After the high of Monday, the rest of the week pretty much went downhill on a personal level. Okay, not all the way down, but just enough to make me grumpy. I don't honestly know how people live through a 'rainy season'.

On a writing level however, I couldn't have had a better week. I know most of you don't pay any attention to my sidebar and that's okay, but I just wanted to let you know I'm closing in on the end of Ellis and Violet's story. 77,301K as of last night at 7:45 pm.

Eight thousand more words. That's it and I'm done. I have three plot lines to tie together, a wedding to plan, and a villainess who needs to get her comeuppance. I also found a surprise surprise totally big freaking surprise NEW character who is totally freaking going to blow the doors off the end of the story. (And he will get his own book out of the deal. How cool is that? His name is Rory.)

I wrote some end notes while waiting in the pick-up line at school so I know pretty much where I'm going with the whole thing. And you know, I have to say, as much as I write in my pants, this outlining thing isn't so bad -- especially if I don't force it.

I'm sorry I don't have any links this week. I tried to get around to as many of you as I could. There's a lot of great stuff going on. Yay Roland! Yay Talli! Yay Lisa and Laura!

The writing took up a lot of time, and as you know, the writing comes first. I also got lost for two hours one day doing research, but it was important so ...

I hope you all have a great weekend. I'll be digging a trench.


**6:15 am I just heard about the massive quake and tsunami in Japan. I will be praying for those affected, and for those of you on the West Coast and Hawaii. Stay safe.

Where Does It End?

Last Monday I posted a snippet from Grahame Greene --

A story has no beginning or end;
arbitrarily one chooses that moment of
experience from which to look back
or from which to look ahead.

The End of the Affair 1951

We had a discussion on where we begin a story. Roland had a fabulous counter-question after reading my post -- where do we end the story?


Do we linger too long, milking the afterglow of the story. Or do we end too abruptly once the crisis is averted or overcome?

Many teachers of creative writing stress not to begin writing until you have the ending clearly in mind

so that you can head to it with skillful foreshadowing and firm precision, not meandering until the end just comes to you.

I think that approach also helps you to know when to begin.

If you know the ending with its transformation of the main character, then you know where to start your story ...

and you get a sense of how to bring your protagonist to his destination.


So my question to you -- Do you know the ending before your beginning? Or Do you let it just come to you?