In my mind, my friend and alter ego, Eloise Butts, was born the day my first case of books arrived via UPS.
I clearly remember the date — October 2, 2007 — because that’s my best friend Vanessa’s husband’s birthday, and we went out to dinner that night to celebrate. I bought her husband a fancy fountain pen as a present, and Vanessa bought the very first copy of Hurricane Season — which was fitting because that girl is always one of the first people to believe in me! I actually borrowed Jon’s birthday pen to sign that first copy, and I remember how excited I was to officially be a published author!
Right from the start, I had a solid marketing plan for my book. I wasn’t all that worried about having my book on a jam-packed bookshelf in an overcrowded bookstore — even though that was something I did care about… But instead, what I really wanted was to get in front of a group of women so I could talk to them about why I wrote a book about a 33-year-old virgin.
Let me clarify something right off the bat: I wasn’t a virgin when I married my husband, Lou. (I’m only offering this detail because I’ve been asked that question so many times!) And I’ll even go a step further and confess to you that I was pretty “confused” in college. (Which, I realize, is a very loaded statement to say about myself, and I certainly plan to write a series of blog entries about all of that one day!) But since you’re just getting to know me and Eloise, I wanted to be up front.
But you should also know that I’m not interested in knowing the virginity status of other people, and I’ve never had an agenda when it comes to the topic of abstinence. The fact is, I didn’t write a book about abstinence versus sex. In my mind, sex is a very personal and private situation, and I don’t want to be the detail keeper or spokesperson for any sort of abstinence or morality movement.
However, I’ve never wished to be seen as someone who is dismissive or careless about the larger realities of sex and sexuality in our culture — because I believe the act of having sex is inexplicably tied into the emotional and spiritual composition of womanhood, and it’s something I wish I had honored differently in my own life. (More on that later, too!)
So what, then, made writing a story about a 33-year-old-virgin interesting to me?
Conviction.
That is, what do you believe in? And, how willing are you to stand firm in your beliefs when the world around you seems to see your conviction as a waste of faith? And…do your convictions still hold up after the storm waters recede, and everything about your life looks different? Will you increase your faith to hold steady in your beliefs, or will you compromise your convictions to make your new reality seem easier?
I will have a lot to say about the topic of conviction as my Lessons from the Shoreline posts unfold. But back when my novel first came out, I felt very certain about the story I wrote, and the convictions I held on behalf of Eloise and the rest of the characters in the book. I had a great deal of passion for the story of this beautiful flight attendant, living in South Beach, who had every reason to be “all that and a bag of chips” in the eyes of the world, but who held onto this one very strong conviction simply because it mattered to her. I love that about Eloise, and for a long time, I never doubted anything about her or the story I wrote.
But then…my life complicated hers.
In the decade or so since Eloise was born to the world, I’ve lost so much. My father died, all of my money and worldly security literally vaporized into thin air, a few of my most important friends decided not to journey with me anymore…and, worst of all, I nearly lost my husband.
During some of my darkest hours, when I was struggling to remember who I am, I would flip back in my journal and start reading. And that’s when the real story of Hurricane Season showed up for me in my life. When the hardships of my life “blew in, blew up, and blew out,” I had to ask myself if I really believed that a person could truly live their life with both passion and conviction.
What I discovered when I compared my early thoughts and beliefs against the testing of my harsh reality is that some of the things I believed for myself and for Eloise’s future were just the naive wishes of an entitled person who had no real life experiences to challenge her beliefs.
For me, it was easy to have beliefs about how things should be when most of my beliefs were just words.
But when my words were tested in a very real way, standing up for them involved a completely different muscle of faith. The total disruption of the storms in my life scattered pieces of me out into the open, and the light of my reality revealed so much. And when the time came to inspect the damage, and to gather up the pieces I could still salvage, the things that survived the storms were the things I knew were completely real.
Among the ruins I found Eloise, and I discovered that everything I believed about her, for her, and had infused into her life had all survived the stormy test. She somehow contained my real Truth, and I still believed in her story, and in the
The second edition of Hurricane Season is in the works, and after a careful edit, some things have changed. For starters, I corrected all of the 20+ copy edits I missed in the first edition — including the misspelling of my first name on every single spread of the entire book! (Ugh.) And, I’ve updated the narrative a bit here and there — I’ve cut out some of the over-explaining I didn’t know how to trim in my early days as an author. Oh, and I’ve picked up the pacing when the story felt like it was dragging. It feels good to take a pass at the narrative now after all these years…
But I didn’t touch Eloise.
She’s still the same, only maybe a little better — in my eyes at least! She’s made it through a string of “category five hurricanes” in my life, and she has somehow survived all of my failures perfectly intact. Her honesty was always greater than mine, I suppose, and her convictions were somehow more unshakable than I ever realized. (How did I ever write something that was true before I knew how true it could be? I really don’t know…)
But I guess Eloise Butts is one of the best keepers of my Truth, and, as it turns out, she’s also provided me with the greatest test of my own convictions.
