11 a.m.

Well, I’ve gone and done it. Put my ass out there for all to see.

I have started posting a fictional diary to Stubblejumpers Café, and I have let friends, family, and acquaintances know about it. What the hell, if I am going to make a fool of myself, might as well go all the way and do it right.

When at times I felt stuck here in this house, I wished I had a place to escape to. Instead of finding another place to live, I imagined what it might be like if I did. Or if I had. Thus was born this alternative reality.

It was a kind of therapy, a way of ‘having it all’ without having to live with the fallout. I wrote ‘as if,’ and it resolved something in me. I am no longer so sure I need my own place to live; I am content right here and the urge to escape is not in the forefront. But the process of writing the café life has begun, and I hope to have some fun with it.

I have been wanting a public webpage for some time, something my sisters and aunts could read. So this is a start. If I waited until it had a snazzy design and some exciting plot, it might never go any further than the little bit that’s already written. So I’ve posted it in all its plainness.

My third-person narrative has always been my weakest writing, adding a distance between myself and a reader so that one doesn’t care much about the characters. First-person comes naturally after 30 years of keeping a diary. So I haven’t challenged myself much there.

People I grew up with have said to me, “You have such an imagination. You should be writing stories.” My uncle and mother have been telling me something similar for as long as I can remember. I am not so sure it’s true, after reading what other writers come up with. I don’t have near their descriptive or artistic flair, their organizational ability; their storytelling magic. And I don’t have a story or characters in my head, dying to get out, developing themselves in my dreams and reveries. I am not my idea of a ‘writer,’ though I write, love to write, must write. Half of the need is for the simple act of doing it.

The story of the café recounts factual memories, actual dreams, and likely scenarios. There is a lot more truth in it than one might think, but the bottom line is that it is fiction. The old café no longer stands, but everything I remember about it, about my childhood and this café, is fact.

The tiny town whose Main Street the café graced is my home town, just down the road from here. The buildings and businesses I describe are really there, and so are the people ... with some changes. I have license to create my own little reality, eh ... so I am going to play.

xoxo
etc
Kate