The manuscript that I hope will become my next book has just been sent to my agent, who is also an accomplished editor. She has applied her talents to finding my writing slips and is now preparing the manuscript by resetting it in the style approved by the publisher she believes will be happy to publish it.
Is there anything more thrilling than finishing a book? Maybe. Lifting a copy of the published volume out of its delivery carton for the very first time is pretty exciting, too. I’m looking forward to the next time that happens to me.
This book has been several years in the making. It was first suggested to me by residents of the senior community where I have an assisted living apartment, the Carlisle Naples. Those residents wondered why I didn’t write about what it’s like to live in a place like this.
Not that I hadn’t already thought of writing it, but I couldn’t imagine how to approach the matter.
That’s because living here is a combination of delight, sadness, fun, regret, amusement, worry, pleasure, pain, and just about everything else we can experience. How do you combine all that in a way that would interest readers?
Finally, the answer came to me: satire. I would view life in assisted living through the lens of satire.
To me, living here is entertaining, even though residents are exposed to every personal foible imaginable. I think that’s because I view life as one big joke – on us. If we fail to see that life is entertaining, we will contract into ourselves and shrivel away into nothingness.
We may as well let life with all its oddities grab hold of us and entertain us. Because life is all we’ve got. And we are lucky to have it.