Month: February 2012

  • Call the Midwife.

    Nobody told me that writing a book is so much like giving birth. This is crazy.

    I’ve had a book swimming around in my head for years. Correction: Make that books. It’s a wonder I can think at all with all this stuff jumping around in here.

    Wow, the confusion!

    There’s a thought–better write that down!

    Where?

    Wait, can’t blog it–it should go in the book!

    Which one?

    How should I know? You’re the writer!

    I am? Oh, wait. Yes…yes, I am. I am?

    You’ve known it your whole life. Pull yourself together, woman.

    Am I the only idiot who has involved conversations with herself?

    Probably.

    Shut up.

    You asked.

    Yes, I suppose I did. Now what? Where do I go from here? 

    Enough with the italics. Too much introspection. Good grief. This has to be hormone-driven.

    What is happening to me? Is this the part where I look back and see with startling clarity the Braxton-Hicks contractions of those first scribbled stories, the years of teaching creative writing, the lifestory coaching, the endless journaling, the sporadic ebb and flow of blogging? Where I suddenly realize that maybe this is really it, that maybe I really am finally in labor–that I am about to have a book? Or maybe it’s just another one of those dreams about giving birth to an alien. I don’t know what’s happening, but I do know this is scary mess.

    Forget boiling water. I need coffee.

  • Brighter Days

    These are happier times, and I have Write Where It Hurts to thank for it. Jo Ann and Kate, I don’t deserve the love and encouragement the two of you (along with the beautiful WWIH community) have brought into my life, but I am truly grateful. Not only do I feel like I can start really writing again, I actually feel like I’m being equipped and encouraged to do so in ways that are simultaneously pushing me forward and sending me deeper into myself to search out the story. 

    I am praying over a way to attend at least one writers conference this year. I feel like this is the next step toward publishing–the lifelong dream I had begun to wonder if I should just put down. God isn’t letting me put it down.

    So I’m dusting off the cobwebs and oiling the rusty hinges and I’m writing–really writing–again. I have to say it feels amazing.