by Gillie Easdon

My laundry room/office cupboard door is bedecked in square post-it notes, pink for storyline and chapters, blue for additional notes to explore and plum for research yet to do on things like ABI (acquired brain injuries) and Bayou prawns. This skeleton, sans a bunch of bones still, is proof to me that “Helen,” my first draft of a novel, is coming together. But I have not written this week, and I glance in the room the same way I check on my son to be certain he is breathing while he sleeps.

“Perseverance” is one of the positive words I will lean on over the next month and a half, with my self-imposed September-end deadline. It is much nicer than the words I sometimes use only on myself. This one is kind and strong and enduring like favorite lines in a book or the smell of irises when I was small. What compels me about this word or approach is it is process-based, not carrot-based.

I admit, this is not a word I would associate with myself or my writing, mostly deadline and impulse-driven, save for this story, the one stuck and then taped to the door. 61 post-its so far, to make sense of all those typed words, a puzzle worth perseverance.