A peek in Therese’s diary
(during the process of writing Past Suspicion):
May
31, 1999, Memorial Day
(After
watching Pewaukee’s Memorial Day parade,
Therese writes about roaming the graveyard.) “I knew, almost
instantly, that I will use this setting in my new story. There was just something about it to
remember.”
“There is so much I
don’t know yet [about the story] . . . so much I’m discovering as I go . . . I
believe it will work itself out as it should.
It’s all so strange -- an adventure to write because even I’m never quite
sure what’s going to happen.”
“I wrote five
pages today, and -- oh! -- it is invigorating!
The characters and the places that come out . . . come alive . . . My hand and my pen can’t move fast
enough!”
(Wrote eleven
pages.) “It’s slowly turning into a
novel. I believe it was meant to be all
along -- but the idea would have been, I think, too overwhelming for me from the
beginning. I can see now, however, it
needs this space and time to develop to the fullest. And the pages keep on coming.”
“I just stopped
writing for tonight. I had to. I get too enthusiastic about my writing and
then I can’t fall asleep.” (Wrote
eleven pages.)
“My head feels
full from writing. There is so much to
mesh together evenly in the end of a novel, and I’m coming to that now.”
“This afternoon I
finished my novel. It is an
accomplishment that really makes me think.
After almost four months devoted to writing this book, it’s hard to
believe I’ve finished it. And yet I
haven’t; there is so much to go back over and fix and add . . . revise and
rewrite. I can’t wait!”