Reunion Beach Elin Hilderbrand (best selling autobiographies .TXT) 📖

it began to look like a burial ground instead of a waterway. They cleaned it up. They knew that beauty cannot thrive in clutter.

Clear your head.

Fight for your stories, but don’t expect anything beyond that feeling you get when you hold that book in your hands for the first time. You know what I’m talking about. You lift your latest novel out of the box and you can smell the ink and the glue. A sense of accomplishment washes over you, and you take it in, only to have that pleasure killed off when some jackal on Amazon gives it a one-star review. A year of work reduced to one star by a person who cannot spell your name or confuses you with another author with three names and reviews her title and not yours. But don’t fret about that either. Whether you’re getting a lousy review, or assigned one accidentally, they don’t really matter. Besides, there are many more readers who love you and your books than don’t.

Be grateful.

There will always be a place for you on the shelf called New Releases. It’s an honor to be there, and you know that. That will have to be enough, because, old friend, it is enough. You loved every book you wrote, whether it did well or not. Don’t live in the light of past glory. We can’t go back, and there’s a good reason for that. We shouldn’t go back. We have to work with what we have in the moment that it lives.

The present is always better than the past.

You can count on the present because you’re living in it, while the past is always under rewrite, and therefore open to re-interpretation, which isn’t good for anybody.

Trust your librarian and your local bookseller.

There was a time when there was a library where you borrowed books and a bookstore where you purchased books and that was that. The bookstore curated the new releases and the librarians chose from a catalog and bought the books they believed their patrons would read and enjoy. Curation is gone, replaced with online stores where you can buy anything you want, any hour of the day, and have it delivered. Deliveries include chili dogs, a sack of kitty litter, or the latest novel.

I wondered what would happen to art when it was available 24/7, and now you know.

Love ya, Pat

To: DBF

From: PC

Hey, Dot. I heard you calling. What are you doing in the hospital? I just saw a tube and figured you were in for something. I hope you didn’t go to all that trouble for a facelift. You don’t need one! Not yet. That was a joke, sister. Men don’t notice them by the way. We are missing the gene that identifies the results of plastic surgery. Don’t know why that is true. Cassandra will see a woman walking toward us, back when I was there and could walk, and she’d say under her breath: new lips or forehead like an ice rink or Law me, she’s so pulled she’ll have to change her name to Taffy. But I never saw any of that.

When a woman walked by, I only saw the pluses and never the minuses. I saw something flutter, something move, heard a laugh, a light womanly laugh, watch her hand move like a feather through the air, saw a dainty foot, a pretty leg, a big smile, small ears. I don’t know what all I saw, but it thrilled me. I saw everything when I looked at a woman. Everything good. Everything beautiful, I hate that word, it’s so worn out with meaning from being used to describe rugs, flowers, women, and whatever else goes by that people don’t seem to have a word for.

How is it we don’t create new words when we see something that astonishes us? Why don’t we make up new words for the things that make us feel new? I would call my wife in the morning . . . well, I would say she looks Sharoshola. She looks Sharoshola—a new English word that means tousled and down-right gorgeous. I’ll tell you what they don’t have a new word for, old friend. They don’t have a new word for dead. Dead is gone, over, finished, done. Gone and done do not rhyme so don’t write a poem with them. Dead is final. But it doesn’t feel it. Don’t know how to tell you that there’s no bad news from here. But whatever you’re doing, for whatever reason you’re in the hospital, get the hell out of there as soon as you can. If you’ve got a vein, they’ve got a tube for it. And they will insert that tube. So get the hell out of there. Take it from me. You can skip that step called pain in the life journey. Everyone should. Getting sick is not worth the time, keeps you from doing the things you want to do or should be doing.

Love ya, Pat

To: DBF

From: PC

I haven’t heard from you, Dot. Where are you? I understand you’re busy. You probably got out of the hospital and took that new face and went to a Writer’s Conference somewhere fancy. Beware of those conferences, getting drunk with other authors will only lead to their shame and your blame. Always leave the party early, otherwise you’ll end up with the bill. Are you laughing now? You never cared about the bill, hell, neither did I. I always wondered about people who dodged the tab, how much are they saving? The cost of a Diet Coke and a highball? Everybody knows they don’t want to pay the bill when they don’t pick up a check, which makes them ungenerous, and who wants to be that at three a.m. when the bar is closing? Not a good look as you used to say. I am listening for you, expecting some little shimmer of your good self, my friend, wondering if you and Peter and the kids are all right—and