I’m in the process of writing a book.  I’ve been working on this damn thing for years, no exaggeration, and I’m finally gaining some traction with it.

In a nutshell, it’s a collection of flash fiction and short-short stories based on images from the Lake George region from 1880-1980.  These are tasty pieces of fiction, some of them funny, others introspective, many nostalgic.  Working on it has been a blast, but there’s been a fair amount of procrastination-induced pain along the way.  My goal/objective/gold ring is to be able to promote it in Lake George summer 2026.

The idea for the book came several years ago when I entered a writing contest where you took a picture — any image — and wrote 500 words on it.  I loved the format so much that when I started seeing some fabulous pictures popping up on Facebook, I got the idea to do a collection of shorts and flash (two of my favorite genres) on Lake George images.  (I didn’t win the contest, but I still love the story that I wrote, and submit it to appropriate contests now and then, tweaked and further polished.  SOMEBODY’s going to love it as much as I do, someday, dammit.)

Gathering the images has been both the easiest and hardest part.  The Coming Home to Lake George, NY Facebook page have provided me with the vast majority of images.  Many are old postcards, others photographs found in attics or long-shelved books, found when an elderly family passed away.  A few are from my own collection.  Ebay and other sources such as historical societies and museums have also proved fruitful.

Some stories already drafted are in need of an image, and I spend a lot of time online looking for specific things through various resources.  I also have a fair amount of images that I love for one reason or another, but an appropriate story has yet to surface in my mind to attach to it.

I’m finally getting help in the form of writer and editor Linsey Ewing, the result of a fortunate meeting at the Space to Create Writing Retreat in French Camp in February 2024.  We did a single coaching session back then, and I was able to blurt out some concerns to a completely objective party.

Something that has given me trouble is worrying about what people will think, say, or even worse, not think or say.  I spent my summers in Lake George as a kid as we owned a summer house on the East Side.  My irrational fear is that people who have lived there their whole lives (mainly year-round residents) will read my little stories and scoff, saying things like “Well, it wasn’t really like that,” or “That wouldn’t have really happened there,” or feel that I’ve left out big things.  For instance, I never went to Silver Bay and never camped out on any of the islands.  These silly things have, believe it or not, kept me from making progress, which is pretty stupid when I look at that in black and white.

But it’s there; a form of imposter syndrome, which I’ve wrestled with in many forms throughout my life.  But during our first impromptu coaching session, as I spilled my guts to Linsey about my fears of criticism, she wisely asked me, “Yeah, and so what?”  And it was a very good question, because, really, so what?  They’re my stories.  Hello, THEY’RE STORIES.  It’s FICTION (pretty much).

I’m not claiming to be an expert on the lower Adirondacks. I’m just enjoying making up some fun fiction to wonderful images, which of course will have a certain degree of influence from my own time spent there.  Anyone who knows me will probably be able to pick those pieces out pretty easily.  But in the end, they’re just stories, there for your enjoyment, a sense of nostalgia.

And I’d just like to say, I don’t mind criticism of my work — if you don’t like the way I structure a sentence or think the story stinks or my grammar is horrendous, that’s fine; that doesn’t bother me.  What scares me is being seen as a Lake George imposter, someone who had no right to be there in the first place, and doesn’t know what she’s talking about.  Where does this come from, anyway?  In my heart of hearts, I know it comes from having let our summer house go in 2010; I feel like in having let that happen, I gave up all rights I may have ever had — past, present, or future — to lay any claim to the area.  I also know this is a load of crap.  Regrets are not serving me well here.

So onward I march.  Linsey has helped me set some definitive goal deadlines, and I’m trying to keep a relationship with my website so we don’t drift apart like we did last year.  I’m looking forward to finishing this project and getting it out into the world.  Done is better than perfect, which nothing ever is anyway.