Never Wanna be a Piker

Starting to work back through the novel Training Wheel Mother now, editing and revising from the standpoint of knowing the ending and needing to have the entire story “plane out” as it were, it feels as if I am climbing a mountain. I have been up Mounts Hood, St. Helens, Iak and Adams. At the 9,500 foot level on Mt. Adams, someone long ago etched several taunting sayings in the boulders up there. Distinctly, I remember one of those etchings; “If you quit now you’re a piker.”

Today, working inside the MS Word file containing Chapter Eleven of Training Wheel Mother as evening draws down, I am standing in an elevated spot, able to look out in several directions across the vast expanse of over forty Chapters. I can see the story-scape undulating into the haze of the distance, leaving a great deal hidden in darkening swales and canyons and the winding grooves of the streams always trickling down in their jungly drainages. Many times, I have walked all of it. From time to time, losing my footing, I have spilt a lot of coffee there. Experimentally along the way, with my little hand-held Garmin GPS, I have established Way Points all over the story. But I now realize I don’t remember which Waypoints are separated by impossibly deep canyons and which are just a stroll apart.

But I can see my consecutively numbered Chapters scattered like a trail of bread crumbs. I will have to let the magic of the story lure me from one morsel to the next. If I quit now, I’m a piker.