I’d Dreamed About Writing This Novel for 50 Years
By Ana Veciana-Suarez
Dulcinea loitered in the shadows for as long as I can remember—a spirit, a specter, a vague idea. She seemed content to stay there, remaining at the edges while I raised my five children. As I built my career in journalism. During widowhood and remarriage. Through the demands of caregiving and the travails of upsizing and downsizing a family.
How patient she proved to be! How stubbornly durable!
She first entered my life when I read Miguel de Cervantes’s masterpiece as a tenth grader in Mrs. Olmos’s Spanish IV class. Relegated to a minor role, the Dulcinea of Don Quixote fame was a woman who existed only through the prism of a man’s desires, but I, ever the dreamer, vowed to one day give her the voice she had been denied.
It took me half a century to keep that promise, but I did. At last, Dulcinea, the character in my new novel that bears her name, has stepped out of the shadows to claim herself. She is a flawed and fascinating woman, as conflicted and driven by passion as I had once imagined her to be.
What took me so long to tell her story?
At the risk of sounding defensive, let me answer with a couple of questions of my own: How many youthful fantasies have you abandoned? How many wondrous ideas have you surrendered to the demands of daily living?
More than you want to admit, I bet. Most of us allow our childhood dreams to fade away for ostensibly good reasons: bills, jobs, children, aging parents, laundry, cooking, cleaning. All valid duties that devour our hours and our energy. However, experience has taught me that dreams also wither because we make up excuses to ameliorate the guilt of not being true to our more ambitious selves.
As we grow older, we refuse to dare. We fear change. We listen to our inner critics. We accept others’ naysaying. And in the end, we surrender to the obstacles rather than using them as motivation. I know this because I justified my delay with that very handy One-Day-I-Will excuse.
One Day eventually came for me, though I can’t claim that newfound courage forced me into action. No, nothing so inspiring. Credit must go instead to the proverbial fork in the road—a turning point that is more cliff than off-ramp, more shove than nudge.
After more than forty years in a newspaper job I loved, I was offered a buyout too good to turn down. The path I had trod for so long detoured into an unfamiliar trail. Not surprisingly, I muddled and wallowed and even lost my way a couple of times. Unlike a Hollywood script, I experienced no sudden epiphany, no clarion call about what I was meant to do.
Thank goodness Dulcinea spotted my ambivalence and stormed right into it. At first she whispered, hoping sweet words would lure me. Then, upset by my inattentiveness, she screamed and demanded that I listen.
Gradually, though not always willingly, she announced her real name, Dolça Llull Prat, and described her hometown, Barcelona. At my keyboard, I transcribed her story with the urgency of a person who finally — finally! — recognized the obvious: I don’t have forever. It is no coincidence that Dulcinea’s tale is about missed opportunities and second chances, beginnings and endings, regrets and amends. It is about star-crossed love wrapped in the story of a grandmother coming into her own.
In the excruciating process of research and writing, and then rewriting, I learned as much about the importance of keeping promises as I did about the Spanish Inquisition. Our time to be true to ourselves is now; not tomorrow, not after the children are grown, not after the work deadlines are met and the mortgage paid. The perfect conditions, the ideal circumstances? They may never happen.
As Dulcinea rides her way into a 21st-century world, I wish I had allowed her out of the shadows earlier. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to write about her. I wish I had been more confident, more adventurous, more strong-willed, more encouraging of that gawky, teenage bookworm who dreamed an impossible dream.
I would have had so much more time to bask in the pleasure of my creation.
Ana Veciana-Suarez is a syndicated columnist for Tribune Content Agency and the author of Dulcinea, The Chin Kiss King, Flight to Freedom, and Birthday Parties in Heaven. Her commentary has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Woman's Day, the Washington Post Magazine, Parenting, Reader's Digest, Latina, and various newspapers and websites. It also has been included in several anthologies, garnering prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Society of Feature and Sunday Editors, Women in Communications, and the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. She was awarded the 2019 Cintas Fellowship for Creative Writing. She lives in Miami.