*Write Now*

"How many thumbdrives did you put your manuscript on?"
            I pressed my tray table up, locked it, then turned to face my husband.
            "Four. No, five."
            He raised his eyebrows a couple times. "Is it good?" he said. "Your book?"
            I shrugged. "I think so."
            "And it's ready? You're sure?"
            I looked out into the night, peered down at the sprinkle of lights that was Colorado Springs.
            "Yep. It's ready. I'm sure."
            He squeezed my hand. "Cool. Give one to anyone who'll take it."

~~~~~~~

In bed that night, I flipped through my Writing for the Soul conference binder. I paused at the page titled, "20 Things a Writer Should Never Do.” I counted my transgressions on my fingers, then toes. I ran a finger across one of my palms, noticed how it was slicked with sweat. I glanced at my husband. ESPN SportsCenter lit and darkened his sleeping face.
            I shoved the covers down and swung my feet onto the plush carpet, tiptoed over to my brown and pink Hello Kitty tote bag. I unzipped the back pocket and dug under business cards, tampons, and lipglosses to find one, three, five jumpdrives. I cupped them in my left hand and opened my suitcase with my right, found my Monday day-of-the-week undies and folded the thumbdrives inside.
            "Not yet, guys," I told the bundle. "You're not ready, not even close."
            I switched off the bedside lamp and slipped back in bed, drew the silky sheets and pristine down comforter up to my chin. I squinted at the mini-chandelier above me. Moonlight twinkled on the crystals.
            "Thank you," I said in a wee voice.

~~~~~~~

Friday after breakfast, I shook hands with my first appointment—a lady agent. I forced myself not to stare at her basketball-looking hairdo, tried not to think about her biography. "Handpaints hobbit models in her spare time.”
            The woman drummed her French-manicure on the table between us.
            "So. Do you have a sample chapter?"
            I stuck my trembling hands inside my Hello Kitty bag, produced a packet of what I thought was my best work.
            The hobbit painter tapped the table with a red Bic pen as she scanned my work. She didn't look up when she spoke.
            "Too much telling," she said. She turned a page. "Not enough dialogue." She nudged the chapter back to me. "You write in passive. Stop."
            She removed her rainbow, polka-dotted reading glasses and leaned toward me, attempted a smile. I tried not to stare at the parentheses ditches on either side of her mouth.
            "Honey, it's like you typed out a phone conversation you had with your best girlfriend. Don't tell me what happened. Show me. Put me in the room with you."
            She looked past me, raised her hand. "Next."

~~~~~~~

I stopped in front of the woman who reminded me of Maude, a television actress from way back when. Her eyes seemed kind. The placard in front of her read, "Christian Writers Guild Mentor."
            I breathed deep through my nose. "You busy?" I said on the exhale.
            She sat straighter, patted the empty chair beside her. "Sit."
            I sat, rooted for a lipgloss in my Hello Kitty bag, pinked my lips.
            "So?" she said.
            "So I brought my manuscript here."
            "And?"
            "And the lady agent who decorates Frodos told me I write passive, that I don't use enough dialogue."
            She pinched at the pleats in her slacks. "How long did it take?"
            I sighed. My lips flapped. "About two minutes."
            "No," she said. "I meant to write the book."
            I huffed. "That's just it," I said. "It only took six months. It just flowed out of me, like pee.”
            I peeked at her from under my lashes, to see if I'd offended her. She didn't blink.
            "Oh."
            I tilted my head. "Oh, what?"
            She plucked the cap off her pen and used it to clean under her nails.
            "That happened to me too," she said. "Did you think because it just came out of you, it was great? That it was a gift from God?"
            She chuckled and lifted my chin to close my mouth.
            "Guess what?" she said in a whisper.
            I spoke softly too. "What?"
            "That's not a book. That's your first draft."

~~~

I was late so I tiptoed in and found a seat in the back row of the Saturday afternoon "Thick-Skinned Manuscript Clinic.” Jerry Jenkins and his assistant stood at the front of the classroom on either side of an overhead projector. They wore white labcoats, had stethoscopes around their necks.
            Jerry held up a red pen, waved it like a conductor’s baton. "This," he said, "is my scalpel. And now, I cut."
            He bent over the projector and read silently for a minute or two. Finally he glanced up.
            "Okay," he said. "First to go are the helping verbs. Eliminate words like is, was, am, were, etcetera."
            He marked, read, and slashed some more, then turned to face his assistant.
            "Andy?"
            Andy made red stripes all down the page. "No -ing verbs," Andy said. "Weakens the writing."
            Jerry hovered beside the projector. He grinned as he drew looped lines through modifiers.
            "Why use three adjectives when one will do?"
            Andy tapped the overhead surface. "Not to mention, 'tall, dark, and handsome' is a cliche.'"
            He looked over his shoulder at the screen then back down at the transparency, crossed out two more phrases.
            "As are 'white as snow' and 'old as the hills.'"
            Jerry examined the writing sample again. More red. The page seemed to bleed. Up near the front of the room, someone whimpered.
            "People," Jerry said. "You've got to omit needless words. Trust me. Less is more."
            At the bottom of the piece, Jerry paused. He grinned and drew a smiley face, tapped the transparency.
            "This is great," he said. "'They buried the farmer in his overalls with the dirt still under his fingernails.'  I like that, like it a lot."
            Andy approached the screen in front of the room and pointed to the smiley face sentence with his pen.
            "Plus this is where the story really starts, don't you think, Jer?"
            Jerry stroked his goatee. "Good point. Who cares about all the stuff up top? This is your first sentence."

~~~~~~~

On our last morning in Colorado, when I went to put on my Monday day-of-the-week panties, five jumpdrives clattered as they hit the white tiles in front of my bare feet.
            "What was that?" my husband said from bed.
            "Five thumbdrives hitting the bathroom floor.” I waited.
            "Five?" he said. "You didn't give any away? Not one?"
            "Nope."
            "Why not?
            "They're not ready. I mean—  The book's not. I have to go home and start over, omit needless words, add more dialogue, stuff like that."
            "You sure?"
            "Yes, I'm sure. Believe me, I am very sure."

*Do You See What I See?*

Every night was the same. Mary slumbered until some time between the second and third watch. She would wake then lie wide-eyed until dawn. It had been this way ever since the great and terrible day of the angel. After his visitation, Mary found it difficult to close her eyes, to even blink. Every time she did, she watched not her life, but her son's death, pass before her vision.
            How many times each night did she question her divine appointment? She would move her lips but make no sound.
            "Oh, Sovereign Lord, why? Why did you choose me? Holy Father, I do not think I shall be able to bear it. Please, will you not take this lot from me?”
            Almost always, she felt her hair stir as a slight breeze sighed through the room where she lay. One night she thought she heard the wind speak: "I am.” She had turned onto her stomach, to be face down.
            "Forgive me, my Lord. Your will is perfect, and good. Let it be done to me according to what you have said."
            "You are a prophet, Mary," her cousin Elizabeth had said, "a prophetess. But do not tell the men. They would laugh at you, or yell. Scorn your youth, and your gender."
            "A prophet? I think not," Mary said. "Did not Joel, the son of Pethuel, write of our people having visions? I do not speak for the Lord. He merely shows me things."
            This was after Elizabeth had made a fuss over Mary's arrival. She had washed Mary’s feet herself instead of summoning a servant for the task. All the while she murmured things like, "How is it that the mother of my Lord should come to me?"
            Mary shook her head. "Elizabeth, stop," she said. "I am just a girl, your cousin, the one you see every year at Passover in Jerusalem. Now tell me, what it is like to feel your son move inside you?"
            Elizabeth took Mary's hands and placed them on either side of the tautness beneath her breasts. She glanced down, smiled.
            "Can you believe I possess a bust like this? At my age? Zechariah—"
            Elizabeth stopped when she saw Mary blush, bowed her head, spoke to her belly.
            "Son? Is my cousin, Mary, a prophetess?"
            Mary watched her right hand move. "He kicked me!"
            She knelt and rested her cheek on Elizabeth's swell. "Baby boy, is the child I carry the Son of the Most High God?"
            Mary sat back on her heels and rubbed her face. "That hurt!”
            She gulped and her eyes filled with tears. Elizabeth took her hands and pulled her to standing. She held Mary close and patted her back. Mary thought she could feel faint and gentle movements from inside Elizabeth's belly, as if the baby wanted to communicate to her with his tiny hands.
            "Shalom, cousin. Shalom," Elizabeth said. "Peace be with you. Remember what the angel said? You are highly favored among women. Does that not please you?"
            Mary pulled away, used her sleeve to dry her face.
            "It does, cousin, indeed it does. I am most grateful that my thoughts and deeds please our Lord, but—”

            Elizabeth shook her head. "But what? What could possibly dampen your joy?"
            Mary wrung her hands. "The angel—  He said God would give my son the throne of David."
            Elizabeth drew her breath in. "But that is good. David was a great man."
            Mary walked to the window and peered out. "King David was a man of war.”
            She sighed and glanced back over her shoulder. "Also, King David did not have the Romans to contend with. And . . ."
            Elizabeth crossed the room and stood behind Mary. She removed Mary's head covering and laid it over her arm, released the younger woman’s hair from its constraints and combed it with her fingers. She whispered into the long, dark waves.
            "And what?"
            Mary's inhale sounded frayed to Elizabeth. "And ever since the angel came, I see things, when I close my eyes."
            Elizabeth rested her hands on Mary's shoulders.
            "You see things. It is as I said. You have the gift."
            Mary spun to face Elizabeth, her face contorted. "No gift this, Elizabeth. I see death, suffering."
            Elizabeth gripped her throat. "For our people? God's chosen remnant?"
            Mary lowered her head. Tears fell from her chin to her garment.
            "No," she said. "Of my son, my baby boy, but grown. And no one, no not one, acts on his behalf."
            Elizabeth winced. "How do you bear it, dear one?"
            Mary turned back to the window and squinted across the distance.
            "Promises," she said. "The promises of our Lord: 'Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.'  That comforts, sometimes."
            Behind her, Elizabeth shook her head. "You are so young, and yet, a stronger woman than I.”
            The older woman slipped between Mary and the window. She gathered the young woman's hands in her own, arranged them on her girth again.
            "Tell me what you see."
            Mary shrank back, shook her head. Elizabeth nodded slowly, her eyes narrow. Mary closed hers, saw, shuddered. She opened her eyes wide, to stop the vision.
            Elizabeth's voice was low, almost a growl. "Tell me."
            "No.” The word was a gasp, a plea.
            Elizabeth cupped Mary's chin, lifted it so their eyes met. "I want to know."
            "You do not."
            "I need to, Mary."
            Mary shook her head. "You know not what you ask, cousin."
            "Tell me," Elizabeth said, "so I know how to pray."
            "You cannot pray away his destiny."
            Elizabeth tilted her head. "Can I not?"
            Mary's mouth fell open. Her eyes widened. "No, you cannot. Pray for his strength, and yours, and Zechariah's."
            Elizabeth's eyes glittered with tears. She ran two fingers down the side of Mary's face.
            "I see now," she said, "why He chose you. Now tell me."
            Mary squeezed her eyes shut. Sobs wracked her small frame but she spoke what she saw.
            "I see a king. And a young woman. She is very beautiful, lovely in form. She dances for him. She whispers in his ear. He smiles and then suddenly soldiers— The king sent them, for your son.” Mary twitched as her flesh crawled. She swallowed. "For his . . . head."
            Mary opened her eyes when she heard Elizabeth moan. There she was, on the floor, in a crumple.