As I sat down today to continue writing in my newest novel, Joyful, Joyful, I think I got a little nervous. The whole premise of the story is that the main character has been holding onto a grudge against a childhood acquaintance for over twenty years. I’ve built a huge amount of import around this premise.

Just this morning I began asking myself (this late in the writing of this novel… crazy, I know), if it was even possible to hold onto a grudge that long. Maybe my premise is ridiculous, and human beings couldn’t possibly do that!

Until… I remembered that I just heard of a particular family (parents and one of their kids) doing just that.

Now, I will be the first to say that I don’t know all the parties involved, but apparently it has been around ten years since they’ve spoken or interacted in any way whatsoever. (What the initial offense was, I couldn’t say.) How can that be, you ask? Beats me! My daughter calls and/or emails me daily anywhere from two to ten times. Plus, we do the whole girls’ day out thing often. Plus, she does a four-and-a-half mile walk with my husband twice weekly. Plus (yes, I know I keep starting these sentences with “Plus”), we just got back from a vacation with our daughter and her husband. It’s like we’re all joined at the hip!

I can’t even fathom holding onto a grudge. It makes no sense to me. I heard a saying once that goes something like, “Holding onto a grudge is like allowing someone to live rent-free in your head”. In my case, I don’t have enough room in there to fill up a portion of it unwisely.

Well, now that I’ve had an opportunity to convince myself that we humans are capable of doing strange things (not to mention hurtful), I feel free to move on in writing today in my novel, Joyful, Joyful, which should be released within a number of weeks.

This is great! Glad we had this little talk!