Cynthia Harrison

Memoir

This is my first book, which I wrote for my creative writing students. It was originally a stack of what we teachers call “handouts.” I added to that as I went along and there’s a revised version with internet publishing advice. It needs another revision because KDP really took off. This book is free if you have Kindle Unlimited. It’s maybe a buck or two if you order from Amazon. This is the book that started my publication journey. It’s my only non-fiction book, well it was until I started writing this one. This is the updated version. There are a few covers floating around. I like this one best.

At the time I wrote this book I was also blogging and it satisfied the part of me who wanted to be published. Still, I had several novels written by then. I had a book of short stories, a few had been published by small presses. I had a long time of emailing two or three books to an editor at Harlequin. She asked me to revise each one and then she did not offer me a contract. It was disappointing, which I shared with a writing friend, who gave me a tip about The Wild Rose Press. Many novels later, they are still my publisher.

That was a busy time of life, raising children, marrying and divorcing, becoming a single mother, going to college, working, meeting and marrying my true love, though I didn’t always know if we’d make it. Of my three husbands, Al is the only one who supported my writing. My second husband encouraged me to throw out my box of journals after a flood somewhat destroyed them. In my first book, the textbook/memoir pictured above, I published a story about that pivotal moment with my second husband. With my fork in the road, I chose writing. I realized I loved it. Not as much as my children, not anywhere close. But they were not born yet.

This period of seven years, when my children were born, was a highlight of my life, but it was low too. As my children flourished, my husband changed. So did I. We were getting to know each other in a deeper way. I didn’t finish that first ill-fated novel. As I recall it was about a single mom who wanted to sing. I mostly wrote poetry as it was short and I could write a poem in an hour or two. Lots of them were published in newspapers and magazines. I wrote poems about my husband.

I wrote poems for each of my boys around the time of their births. One while I was pregnant and looking at the full moon. Another when my first was a wee one and we were more or less joined at the hip. My hip. I didn’t get a whole lot of writing done then and I didn’t care. I was living my dream of being a mommy.

So there I was, living in another county, far away from all my friends, with two toddlers. I would walk them in the stroller through this foreign land. Nobody was anywhere. No moms or kids. No dads cutting lawns. This neighborhood was too quiet. The house in a new subdivision was ill-suited to my needs. I wanted a ranch, which is one story with a basement, but we got a quad level. Lots of steps. I was very busy with my babies and those steps. Learning to cook proper meals. I had a little food grinder that I would fill with a dab of our dinner and transform it into baby food.

A reader still, I learned that some “housewife writers” (the term comes from one of my first writing books, “How to be a Housewife Writer.” The other writing text was “The Poet and the Poem” by Judson Jerome. My children were growing, making friends, and I read and read about writing. I picked up a couple of tips. On finding ways to fit writing into your life: Get a babysitter or a house cleaner or both. My husband laughed. “Not happening,” was the gist of his reply. I took a little job waitressing at night so I could have my own money. That was not good for my writing or my mothering. Another writing tip: take creative writing courses. So I quit the job and took some courses at the local community college where I would someday teach.

I joined a poetry group and found my tribe. My husband didn’t really like it, me in college or me sharing poetry with this new group of friends. I was maybe 25. This is the period of my life where I kind of lost my center. It would take awhile for me to get back on track. But it was another fork in the road and it was a long way to get to where I wanted to go.

One of the perks of being poor, which, even with child support, I was, used to be the Pell Grant. I had gone from a few writing classes to wanting to become a teacher (no more waitressing, although it had been a good gig and got me through hard times). There was a brief stint where I was a secretary. It paid less than waitressing but was more respectable. First job was to a VP without much to do. He criticized my skirt length. Said the guys were teasing him. I left and never went back. Sawyer Business School, courtesy of my then boyfriend, soon to be second husband, was not a waste. I learned to type, which would come in very handy soon.

The father of my children is basically a good man. He used to care if I was happy and asked me what job I really wanted to do. I said secretary. I knew “poet” was not a job. I was part of the adult world now. He paid my tuition to secretary school. After we divorced, I did a lot of temping and that was when every single company had their own kind of word processing. I learned them all. I wrote manuals to help myself if I ever came across another machine I’d mastered in the week or two I’d been employed. Never came across the same system twice. When I finally got a job with insurance, it was at an ad agency. “Maybe someday you’ll come back to write for us!” said the supportive employment officer who gave me papers to sign saying I quit. I smiled, so relieved I would never work in advertising again.

I recently read that the number one reason for divorce is “contempt.” And that is the reason I finally decided to divorce my second husband, well, aside from not knowing the hell I would endure and more important, put my children through. So, how did I arrive at such a devastating decision? Like the books said, I tried everything I could first. A trial separation. I ran back to him in a month or two and stayed another few years. Got a ton of therapy. Not marriage counseling because I was the unhappy one, not he. What I got from all that therapy and all the books I read was that I was playing out the scenes from my parents’ marriage. Bounce back and forth. I’d end that pattern or die trying.

My shrink helped me set some boundaries. When I told him what I needed…no I didn’t even get to tell him. I just said “This is what I need from you for us to move forward…” and he said “Go on, Cindy, name your demands.” His voice dripped contempt. After that I didn’t set boundaries, I made new ones. We would try to patch it up several months later, about the time I met Al. The last nail in the coffin of my plan for a happy life.