Why Bother Writing?

I recently received an email from a reader who had picked up my first novel, The Last Beach Bungalow. It was so beautiful and heartfelt and energetic, and it made my whole week to think that the words I worked to put on the page had connected with someone in such a profound way. The personal details this reader shared gave her note texture and intimacy and I felt like she was giving me a story in exchange for mine -- a perfect transaction. I frequently get reader feedback -- nothing like Jodi Picault who gets something like 250 letters a day -- but I'm sharing this particular letter because it's perfect proof of why anyone would bother writing or painting or singing a song. The house, by the way, is on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia--3,000 miles away from the fictional house I created in Redondo Beach:

Dear Jennie -

I LOVED your book! It touched me in so many ways. I want to tell you how I found my own beach house. My husband and I were happy in a beautiful house and we had jobs that we loved (I was an English teacher for twenty-eight years.) DUring vacations we would drive to the beach and stay in a place called "The Honeymoon Cottage" which was set off by itself on a beach surrounded by nothning but sand dunes. For years we would walk the neighborhoods, wistfully, noticing that none of the beach houses were ever for sale. one particular winding path, overgrown with trees and vines was outr favorite, and one day we stopped to talk to a woman who was gardening in the small sandy yard of her beach house. She confirmed that houses rarely came up for sale, that "people came and stayed." Years later on a Sunsayd we drove past her house and it was for sale --and there was an open house. We wrote up a contract in ten minutes and on the drive home realized that we lived and worked three hours away...and we had to find a way to pay for it!

We retired and moved into it as soon as we could. Every day it makes me happy. The house, with its glass and light and crow's nest, is an expression of me. And shortly after moving in, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. The morning before surgery I walked the beach at sunrise and was greeted by a family of dolphins jumping and playing right in front of me. The morning before my first chemo treatment, a flock of pelicans glided gently over my head as I walked the beach. And before the first radiation treatment, the dolphins came back. I felt a sense of peace and serenity each time. Some houses are meant to be.

Thank you for writing a book that spoke to me!
Barbette