Beginnings

I'm afraid it's going to take me a minute to learn how to write an author blog worth reading, but the only way to do that is to start! So alas, here I go.

Why the hell is everything italic? It won't let me change it. I guess it'll take me a minute to figure that out too. I guess this is going to be more of a test post I'll probably delete later.

Anyway, while this website and this blog are new, I'm not new to writing. I've been writing stories all my life, even though it took me a until well into adulthood to call myself a "writer," Mostly because I had snobby artsy friends as a kid who gatekept that identity for themselves and I gullibly went along with it.

I became totally disabled in my 20's due to Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, POTS, and autism/anxiety/etc, and that was when I became really committed to the idea of writing a book. I'd sit, or lie in bed with my laptop, for 14 hours a day taking notes for stories and brainstorming ideas. But somehow 14 hours a day for literal years didn't translate to actually writing the book, and I never finished that project. Though I learned oodles. You always do, especially when you fail. That's when you learn the most.

Predictably I burned myself out and eventually took a few years off officially writing, though even when I tried to quit I was still jotting down notes and ideas for stories and studying the craft. I got to a point where I thought, if it is this hard for me to focus and feel well enough to write, do I even actually enjoy writing? If I actually wanted to do this, wouldnt it be easier to make myself do it? I still question that, But I think now maybe it doesn't matter if I know for sure if I like writing, because I do it even when I try to stop, and I'm getting a lot better at finishing stories (I have a complete draft of my upcoming novel SWIFT done and IF YOU DON'T TELL is making good progress and fully outlined so will be finished.) I'm just going to do the thing. Even though it's hard. Even though it's really terribly hard and I do not enjoy fighting my body and my brain chemistry so hard every day.

Because it's something I can do, something I'm good at, something that fulfills me, and we all need that.

I hope to tell more of my personal story someday, when I know how to tell it in a way that's more interesting than this. Now I'm just babbling and waxing poetic when I should be writing my goddamn draft. I'll go do that now. I'll try to post regularly with writerly thoughts about the process, the industry, and hopefully some other entertaining tidbits.

I promise at the very least, there will be cat pictures.