It wasn’t until recently that I figured out the main reason I stopped working on my novel, Rapture.  Actually, there were several things that led up to it such as not being able to find my tribe of supportive creatives which I do have now, a bad experience in a writing critique group that was caused by 1 person who took an instant dislike to me, a change in my sleep schedule after my neurologist figured what was causing my insomnia (I would write all night long, sleep an hour or 2, get ready and go to work, come home and start all over again), losing some of my focus because I was working so much, and a few other things.  But the biggest thing was that when all of these other things began happening, my flow just wasn’t flowing anymore so I forced my writing.  It just wasn’t coming from the same natural, organic place that it had been before and my writing suffered.  I tried to blame it all on the change in my sleep schedule and the addition of different sleep meds because I was writing great stuff when I couldn’t sleep.  I likened it to creatives that suffer from mental illness and they say that when they take their meds, they lose their creative abilities.  I suppose it’s a tiny bit like that because late night has always been my time and when that was taken away from me by the meds, it was a jolt to my creativity and I never learned how to channel it any differently.  Before the sleep meds, I wouldn’t really wake up mentally until after 8:00pm.  My neurologist says that on top of my 3 sleep disorders, I am also a night owl and there is no pill for that.  My mother was a night owl too.  She would stay up all night long reading and working puzzles, then fix breakfast for my dad, my brother, and me, take us to school then come home and sleep until shortly before we had to be picked up…she was late a lot.  Then she’d fix a nice dinner and, like me, her pattern would start all over again.  My dad was an early riser, as is my brother and they just jumped into their day.  I, on the other hand, had to be dragged out of bed each morning and then slog my way through the day.  I drove my mom crazy.  But, I think that for parents, the kid that makes you the craziest is the 1 that’s most like you.  It’s hard looking into that mirror.  I come by my sleep issues genetically.  But, as I said, after my natural sleep and writing rhythms were disrupted, I never really learned how to write at times that would be considered normal.  By not retraining my brain and just trying to force the creativity, I sent Rapture off the rails.  I wrote things that even at the time, I wasn’t happy with but I kept on writing.  I got lost and I’m just now beginning to find my way back.  I will have to work on it a lot more but it’s a beginning.  The hard part is going to be sitting down and dissecting Rapture and finding all of the viable pieces and cutting away all the dead weight that I’ve created.  I really believe that once I do that, it will get me back onto the rails so that I can finish Rapture and have it be the book that I first envisioned and not a literary Frankenstein’s creature that I’ve pieced together.  It’s going to be painful but beneficial.  I’ll keep you informed about how the dissection and then the rewrite are progressing.  If you have any tips or words of encouragement, I’d love to hear them!

“Writing is rewriting.  Even when you’ve gotten an agent and an editor, you’ll have to rewrite.  If you fall in love with the vision you want of your work and not your words, the rewriting will become easier.” ~ Nora DeLoach              

My life isn’t much different from anyone else’s.  I’m married to a photographer with his own business that he runs from our home, I work a full-time job that doesn’t feed my soul but is decent and pays the bills, we have 3 dogs and 5 cats, I have a little too much credit card debt that I’m paying down, not nearly enough in savings but working on it, I have some health issues but I’m better off than a lot of people, we have a house with an acre of land in the middle of a nice sized city, and so forth and so on.  Just a normal life with very little to complain about.  I am trying to stop working over-time so that I can have more writing time.  We’re always looking for more writing time, aren’t we?  There never seems to be enough no matter what, though.  I would love to be able to lock myself in my little writing haven that I’ve created and write for days.  But we know just how that would go, don’t we?  We’ll write a little then our mind will wander.  We will Google different things, check our email, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc….  We’ll go back to our writing…for a little bit…we’ll then wander off again.  It’s our process, I suppose.  We can’t just sit and write for hours usually.  I don’t know why that is though.  I’ve tried to decipher why it is that we can’t just do the 1 thing that we say we want to do more than anything else in the world.  Why can’t we stay on task?  Part of the reason that I can’t stay on task is that I have both ADHD and OCD, so I’m easily distracted and when I get distracted, I tend to stay there because of the OCD.  I’ll think of something that I haven’t thought of in a long time…for example, a book that I haven’t seen in months or even years.  And suddenly that book becomes the most important thing in the world and I have to find it.  Why?  For absolutely no reason other than, I have to find it.  I will search for hours until I do find it and then, I can go back to what I had been doing, the book found and then forgotten again.  Is it part of our process or is it avoidance?  Personally, I think it’s both.  We circle our writing like a hawk circling its prey.  After we’re sure that it’s the prey that we’re seeking, we dive down and attack then write like a mad person.  Until we’re hit by the next stray thought.  I’m not a linear thinker.  Maybe that’s why, as a writer, I’m a pantser.  I cannot do an outline or plot a scene to save my life.  I have tried so hard to do both and haven’t ever been successful.  Honestly, I’d rather be that hawk, circling my story and then diving down into it.  We all have our process and, if it works, keep using it.  If it doesn’t, keep experimenting until you find yours.  There’s no right or wrong…there’s only that which works for you.  Don’t let anyone tell you differently.  Just continue to cultivate your talent.  Emphasis on YOUR.  Don’t forget that we are individuals so we all work differently.  My process might work for you but it most likely won’t.  And vice versa.  Find your own path and stay on it as long as it leads somewhere even if it has a few detours here and there.  Just don’t stop.  That’s the 1 thing that’s guaranteed to not work.  So, chart your course and keep going…you’ll get there.  

“You have to write the book that wants to be written.  And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” ~ Madeleine L’Engle           

I have a dream writing space.  It’s a spacious white room with colorful paintings, prints, and decorations.  There are several floor to ceiling bookshelves filled with books from many different subjects but mostly about writing.  There are 2 large windows, 1 a bay window and the other has my desk sitting in front of it.  It looks out over an open field full of wildflowers.  My desk is white with nothing but my laptop, my planner, a notebook and pens on it.  Where do I currently write?  It’s my former fairly tiny crowded craft room.  It does have 2 large windows though with nice views…lots of trees but no wildflowers.  I had to pack up all of my craft materials to make room for my laptop, some books, and notebooks.  I do all of my writing in here but I also do my meetings online for my creativity group, writing incubator and Sunday Night Writing Group as well.  I’ve labeled this my New Orleans room.  I love New Orleans.  My husband and I loved it there so much that we married at the Hotel St. Louis in the French Quarter in December of 1996.  I have masks, pictures, signs, beads, and barware that remind me of NOLA.  It’s painted dove gray with bright red trim.  I wish I had a bigger area but I don’t want to get rid of all of my crafting supplies, tools, and equipment.  Maybe when, notice that I didn’t say if, my writing takes off and it becomes an even bigger part of my life, I’ll get rid of some, if not all of it.  We’ll see.  I’m a bit of a hoarder at heart, I guess.  I’m comfortable with all of my familiar things around me.  The nice thing about my little room is that it’s pretty isolated within the house.  There are 3 ways to get in here…through the master bathroom, which is mine, a door from the living room that is now blocked with my craft supplies and from the backyard.  I come in here and I’m away from the noise and chaos that sometimes comes with having 3 dogs and 5 cats.  My husband can make a noise and I might just barely hear it.  So it’s great in that way.  I’ve made it mine and I love it.  But I’m still going to aim for my dream writing room but if it never happens, I’m fine with that because we can write anywhere.  Some places are better than others but if we have a laptop or a pad of paper and pens, we can write.  Where do you write?  What does your dream writing area look like?  Don’t forget to make that dream room part of your dream writing future.  Flesh your dream out.  Make it as real as you can.  That’s how you make them real.       

Writing chose me as a child.  I don’t remember even thinking about it, I just started writing and have never stopped.  I kept diaries and journals all of my life…some were truthful depictions of my life while some were entries depicting the imaginary life that I had going on in my mind.  I had a very rich and detailed imagination.  I would write letters to imaginary people.  (I never said I was normal, did I?)  I’ve been writing poetry and short stories for as long as I can remember.  I never really shared my writing as a child or teenager.  I asked for and received a Smith Corona electric typewriter for Christmas in 1975 (I still have it) and took a creative writing class from a wonderful teacher in high school who was the 1st person that ever praised my writing up to that point.  We had to write 1 relatively long short story for a major part of our grade midsemester and for some weird reason, I wrote a Russian tragedy with homosexual lovers and all kinds of symbolism.  Honestly, I don’t even have 1 single clue where that all came from.  Oh, and I lived in a smaller town in the buckle of the Bible Belt and this was in probably 1976 when I was 16 years old so I hadn’t been exposed to a lot of Russian tragedies with homosexual lovers at the time.  It was an elaborate story that I was especially proud of but, because of the subject matter, I could have never shared it with my parents because I would have ended up being counseled by our preacher in no time flat!  But Mrs. Shiflett told me it was a wonderful story and went over the story scene by scene pointing out all the things that I had done perfectly.  She also commented on the mature themes in the story and asked how I had come up with it.  I didn’t really have an answer to that question.  1 day, it was in my imagination and the next it was being written.   I got an A+ and she told me to never stop writing.  But to this day, aside from the 2 of us, no one has ever seen that story and now, I don’t even know what happened to it or remember exactly what it was all about.  But I was proud that day and that was the beginning of my dream to be a writer…a published author.  And that dream has never left me.  I, on the other hand, have left it behind several times but have always come back to it.  I found a creative writing class at the junior college in our town in my mid-twenties during my 1st (extremely abusive) marriage and writing became my release.  The instructor was great and once again I found an audience but this time it wasn’t just the instructor…it was the class as well.  I did very well in the class and was once again told to never stop writing.  Then life got in the way after my divorce…working a full-time and 2 part-time jobs and reveling in my freedom took up all of my time.  I still wrote bits and pieces of poetry but nothing longer than that.  Fast forward a bit to Sam, my fiance, who’d been my high school and college sweetheart, dying in a plane crash.  Grief and devastation would not let me write for some time.  We’d decided in college that we wanted different things so we split but stayed the closest of friends.  He was even in my wedding when I married the antithesis of Sam.  After the separation from he who shall remain nameless, Sam and I began to spend more time together and it eventually led to him proposing in February 1986.  We didn’t tell anyone because the divorce wasn’t final and we were enjoying our little secret.  We decided to tell our families who had always wanted us together on Sunday, March 30th, which was Easter.  My birthday had been the 28th and we weren’t able to spend time together but we planned to on the following evening after he finished his last flight ever for a group of skydivers whose founder did not maintain his planes well and 1 of them, in particular, scared Sam so he avoided flying it.  He only flew for them to build up his flight hours so he could eventually fly larger planes.  They had finished for the day when 1 small group wanted to go up 1 more time.  Sam had already tied down the other plane and hadn’t fueled it and told them that.  They told him to take the other plane but he told them no.  They eventually wore him down…1 more jump and he was done for the day.  They took off and about 150′ off of the ground, the plane went left while he was still climbing.  He had no control of the plane…they later found that a cable had snapped…and the plane slammed into the ground and caught on fire.  2 skydivers survived and 2 died along with Sam, whose official cause of death was the fire.  It was 10:00pm and I was wondering where was but assumed that they might have taken him out for a goodbye round of drinks.  I wasn’t worried.  Then my phone rang and it was my mom.  She was crying and screaming for me to turn on the TV news.  She kept asking me what his middle name was and I said, Charles.  And she broke down and told me that she thought he was dead.  About that time, the story came on.  I collapsed onto the floor in hysterics.  Then I heard my doorbell and I somehow answered the door.  It was my brother’s wife and she was crying as well but tried to calm me down.  There was no calming to be had.  I was devastated beyond anything that I could imagine.  I was an emotional wreck for a year…crying, barely functioning, not eating, etc….  Then, one day, I rediscovered my Smith Corona and started writing poetry…all of my anguish, loss, devastation bled out onto that paper.  It was the release that I needed.  It helped me limp slowly back to the world and people around me.  I continued to write while swearing that I’d never love anyone like that again.  A little over 5 years later after a lot of non-serious dating, I met my current husband.  He has always been my biggest writing cheerleader even though he has no clue about the process, the pressure, the doubt, etc….  When I told him earlier this year that I’d joined SARK’s Succulent Wild World, a group for creatives, all he said was that even though he didn’t know what a SARK was, if it made me happy, go for it.  So I had to explain to him who, not what, SARK was.  When I joined a wonderfully talented group of ladies in The Sunday Night Writing Group, he continued to cheer me on.  Same thing when I was invited to join SARK’s Rhapsody of Writing ( a writing incubator) and I did join it.  He doesn’t begrudge me the time commitment it all takes because it makes me happy.  I love that man!  I want to be a writer because I’ve always wanted to be a writer…long before I even dreamed of being published.  Even with the blood, sweat, and tears that come with it, I still love it.  That feeling you get when you write the perfect sentence or find the perfect rhyme can’t even be fully expressed.  And all of the other amazing feelings that writing can evoke in us that make us forget about things like sitting and staring at a sentence for hours because it just doesn’t sound right.  Writing is in my blood, heart, soul, and mind.  I have no choice.  In a way, I suppose it’s my destiny.  So, why do you want to be a writer?  Is it your destiny?     

“Control your own destiny or someone else will.” ~ Jack Welch                           

If you’re like me, you probably sometimes sit and think about how nice it would be to wake up, have a cup of coffee or tea while you gather your writerly (don’t bother getting the dictionary…I made the word up.  I think it has a nice ring to it though so I added it to my Grammarly dictionary) thoughts while looking out the window of your well and perfectly appointed author’s office.  You then open your laptop and begin to type your greatest masterpiece yet…the words flying effortlessly from your fingertips.  No time clocks.  No bosses.  No rush hour.  Just your peaceful office, your laptop, and you.  It’s a wonderful daydream in which to get lost but daydreams only get you so far.  You can’t daydream that masterpiece onto your computer screen.  You have to actually sit down and write it.  True, these types of daydreams keep us motivated but we tend to get lost in the end product and don’t quite get to the actual building of it.  An architect can show you a mock-up of your dream house with detailed floor plans and even a 3D model but until they lay the foundation, put up the walls, slap on a roof, etc…, you can’t live in that house.  It’s just an idea.  A concept.  The same is true with your writing.  Sure, a little daydreaming is a good motivator but it’s the writing that builds the reality about which you’re daydreaming.  Get started on your foundation and go from there.   

” Those that dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” ~ Edgar Allen Poe       

I am having 1 of THOSE days.  The kind where not a creative insight or idea is to be seen or heard coming from me.  I suppose it’s because I have my day job weighing on my mind so very heavily.  My brain is about 95% invested in the craziness of the day.  And it happens to all of us.  It happens to famous bestselling authors, teachers, salespeople, etc…, so I’m not going to let it get to me or make me feel like a loser or a fake.  Sometimes it will be work while other times it will be family issues/responsibilities or relationship problems or even because you spent last night out with your friends and you’re just tired.  We don’t need an excuse to have an off day creatively.  The only thing that we must remember is to not let that 1 off day become several days, then a week, then a month, etc….  Make a deal with yourself that you are going to sit down at your laptop or with a pen and notebook tomorrow and try.  A lot of this is just about showing up and making an effort.  Write, even if it’s crap.  You can fix crap but you can’t fix a blank page…well unless you put words on it.  1 off day does not mean that you’ve lost your creative edge or that you will never be creative again.  Don’t make up excuses to match your current frame of mind.  We, as writers looking to be published, have enough obstacles to overcome…don’t become 1 of them!  Even though I was sure that I had absolutely nothing of interest to write today, somehow, that nothing became something.  It’s not earth-shattering or even anything that you didn’t already know but it’s a reminder that we need to get out of our own way sometimes.  When we say that we can’t do this or that we’re basically setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy.  And then it becomes our excuse for not doing this or that.  It’s like asking a teenager why they did something and they give you the standard reply of because.  You’ve created a tautology that will shut your writing down…it’s true because it is.  I can’t do this because I can’t.  What?  No, it’s true because we’re making it true.  Don’t do that!!  We have enough reasons to not write…life, in general, is a good reason but we’ve written through heartache, joy, excitement, disappointment, love, hate, apathy, feast, famine, etc…, so don’t use I got nothin’ as an excuse to not write.  You can and have written thru every situation and emotion.  Don’t let a BS made up excuse be the reason you stop writing.  And, if you do have nothin’, fake it.  Keep writing until you have somethin’.

“Start writing, no matter what.  The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” ~ Louis L’Amour          

Tired as in weary.  Tired as in fed up.  Tired as in, “I just want to give up.”  We all experience those feelings…more some days than others.  Maybe you’ve slaved over a novel and all you’ve received are rejection slips or, worse yet, silence.  Maybe you’ve been up for days trying to find the perfect words for the final poem in your book of poetry.  Maybe you’re at the point where it all seems like a gigantic waste of time and you’re ready to give up.  And, on top of all that, you’re tired.  You’re working a full-time job that’s ok but doesn’t feed your soul, have a significant other, maybe some kids (2 or 4 legged variety), extended family (maybe in poor health and in need of your assistance), a home (cooking, cleaning, lawn care, repairs, etc….), a social life, that pesky thing called sleep, and writing…if and when you can find the time.  I understand the pressure, the stress, the weariness, the worry, and the longing to have a life that does feed your soul.  I live that same life.  I understand it all.  And you have every right to feel all of those things but what you have to understand and come to terms with is you are the only 1, the only person that can change all of that.  Whether you write your book or not, the days will continue to pass, the job will slowly strangle your soul, the kids will grow up…basically, life will go on.  You have to ask yourself whether you’re okay with all of that happening with you no closer to your dream than you were when you 1st discovered it.  Are you?  Does writing feed your heart, soul, and mind?  Does it give you hope for a different/better future than you’re contemplating right now?  Is it your dream to be published?  Does writing make you happy when it’s not frustrating the hell out of you?  If you answered yes to those questions, then you need to get off of your ass and start writing.  You are a writer.  You have that dream.  You can see that future.  Your future.  Visualize it every single day, every time your resolve slips, as you fall asleep each night.  Hold on tight to it and never let it go because I can guarantee you that the dream will never let go of you.  You manifested it, now set it in motion and make it real. 

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” ~ Stephen King