Welcome! I'm new to this thing called a blog, but never fear, my fellow readers. I'm looking forward to figuring it all out. As someone with a lifelong passion for writing, I suppose I should be embarrassed at missing the boat on something so perfectly designed for writers, but if I took time to wallow in the shame of it all, then I wouldn't have time to write, would I? And THAT is my new resolution for myself. In 2016, I will do more things that are just for me. In my case, that primarily means writing one of the novels swirling around in my head…and then another one…and another…well, you get the idea.
Writing is what I love to do, and I would gladly spend all day doing it if I could just get the rest of the world to cooperate. Alas, the bills roll in every month right on schedule, reminding me that I can't give up my editing job to write unless someone hands me a big, fat contract. Or a movie deal. I could probably get by for a few years on a movie deal…if I really tried. Of course, editing isn't a bad gig for a writer, but I edit mostly Web content and business documents, neither of which provide much food for my creative soul.
It goes without saying that I prefer writing to editing, but I would lose my house, and my children (at least the two remaining at home) would starve if I attempted to switch to writing for my clients instead of editing. I believe I could nail the job, but I would spend far too much time researching material and perfecting every single sentence to ever work at a profitable pace. I wouldn't be able to help myself. My right brain would demand that I try to turn an article about something like removing old wallpaper into a critically acclaimed masterpiece. Good luck with that, right? For me, it's much more profitable to work on an article with the mindset that the content is set, and it's simply my job to clean it up.
At least things are looking better on the creative writing front for 2016. My youngest son started high school last fall, and his lack of enthusiasm for anything beyond video games (a whole other subject for a future blog) has freed up some time that I used to spend volunteering at his schools and attending games, practices, and events. As a result, I finally had time to shake the digital dust off a few books I wrote many years ago (before so many kids) when I somehow had time for myself. After some excruciating time spent manually reformatting relatively ancient word processing files and re-editing every single word, I successfully published one of the books on Amazon a few days ago.
If you want to check it out, the title is Mystery Lady by Anjannette Conner. Fortunately, the genre is historical romance, so at least the content won't seem dated after the long delay between creation and publication. I don't think an extra 20 years after the end of the Revolutionary War matters much at this point. This book is my first step in meeting my goal to focus on what I love and spend more time writing. I will complete the same process for the second and third books and then turn my attention to a whole new story. It will be interesting to see which one makes the journey from brain to paper first.
Meanwhile, I think I can already imagine the therapeutic benefit of releasing some stress in the form of a blog. I can't imagine that a straight diary-style approach focused on my life would remain interesting for long, so I plan to let loose with commentary on a huge range of topics. The topic could be something that annoys me on a given day or something that thrills me. It could be something pulled straight from the headlines or something completely outrageous. Let's just say I plan to have some fun with it, and I certainly hope all my readers do, too.
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