My Writing...

I write. A lot. Every chance I get. Always have.
Short stories, essays, blog posts, novellas, novels.
Somehow, life got in the way, and it took awhile to get here.
For many of us, it seems there's often a long back story to the writing life. Wouldn't it be nice if writing was the front story?
Maybe it's because writing is such a tough way to make a living.
You thin your skin to bleed the stories. Then you thicken it back up to deal with rejection. After awhile, the bruising gets to be too much. So you quit. Until you find that quitting doesn't work either. So back in you go, only to find the bleeding runs a little deeper each time. And so does the bruising.
Why stick with it then?
Because you love it.
Why else?
For this writer--many years of workshops, writers groups, freelancing, fiction and essay submissions, starts and sputters ...and then, the epiphany one day–simple but true: if I wanted to call myself a writer, I needed to write. That novel was not going to write itself.
Along the way, I cut my writing chops--many published stories and essays, multiple awards, an initiation into the writing life.
Short stories, essays, blog posts, novellas, novels.
Somehow, life got in the way, and it took awhile to get here.
For many of us, it seems there's often a long back story to the writing life. Wouldn't it be nice if writing was the front story?
Maybe it's because writing is such a tough way to make a living.
You thin your skin to bleed the stories. Then you thicken it back up to deal with rejection. After awhile, the bruising gets to be too much. So you quit. Until you find that quitting doesn't work either. So back in you go, only to find the bleeding runs a little deeper each time. And so does the bruising.
Why stick with it then?
Because you love it.
Why else?
For this writer--many years of workshops, writers groups, freelancing, fiction and essay submissions, starts and sputters ...and then, the epiphany one day–simple but true: if I wanted to call myself a writer, I needed to write. That novel was not going to write itself.
Along the way, I cut my writing chops--many published stories and essays, multiple awards, an initiation into the writing life.