LETTERS FROM HOME: IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT IN FRONT OF THE COMPUTER SCREEN

June 19, 1997

Dear Julie,

Once upon a time just after I'd moved to the misty, surf-lathered shore of Northern California, I tried to write a novel. One problem was, it wasn't my idea.

I had a new girlfriend who thought a writer should write books. Therefore, for a few weeks I plunked away on an old Underwood manual while she made us avocado and cheese sandwiches.

The scene was idyllic but the writing was plotless rubbish. I soon lost interest -- in the book and eventually the love affair.

At the time I thought, That's the way it is. To fall in and out of love is the natural order. That the bliss never lasted seemed tragic, but I reassured myself by thinking I simply hadn't yet met THE woman meant for me.

In the interim, I realized that the problem was never the woman, it was always my fears.

Lately, I've met lots of people who have written, are writing or want to write a book. One woman spent 12 years on her autobiography. Someone I work with is 12 pages into his first novel. Someone else has written about a traumatic accident that changed his life. One man writes books that teach how to write books.

The discipline and purposefulness of these writers awes me. In most cases they have no guarantee their work will ever be published. What I write gets published all the time, almost automatically. Then a puppy wee wees on it and the process begins again.

I find myself asking these people the same question: How do you do it? How do you stay interested in the same subject day after day, work in a vacuum, stave off the temptation to just watch "Seinfeld" instead? They shrug and say it was necessary.

The novel-writing guru thinks fiction writers are working out their own life scripts in their books, every one a psychological map of the writer's mind. You just have to know the writer well enough to be able to read it.

I think we all do the same thing but in different ways. Jodi Foster says all her movies have been about confronting the fears in her life and being able to say, "I'll live through that."

Jodi: "I keep making the same movie over and over again. Nobody realizes it but me."

Some people face their fears with action, in whitewater rapids or on football fields, atop Everest, leagues beneath the sea, speaking before audiences or squaring off with drug dealers. Others, more inclined to observe than act, confront themselves in "Moby Dick" or a George Strait song.

Given all that, marriage remains the great adventure, one that can evoke any fear, test every preconception you have of yourself and your beloved. I find myself lacking every day and yet know marriage is pointing me in the directions I want to go.

I know how to be alone. I don't always know how to be married.

DC wants me to write a book. Not because a writer should write books, but because it would be an easy way to make a million dollars. Then we could put in a new fence, build that studio/garage behind the house, go to Hawaii instead of North Carolina, buy a building for her practice, adopt a baby, make all our cares go away.

Easy. Look at "The Bridges of Madison County," she says.

Easy?, I say. These things have to be pulled from your soul.

Eyes roll. See "The Bridges of Madison County."

I wish I could make this contribution to our marriage but making up scenarios that help me deal with the issues in my life seems beside the point. Reality is more intriguing.

The episodes are occurring right here in the room. The movie is always running.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.