I’d like to tell you that I don’t stress the small stuff. That is wrong. For over twenty-five years I got up at 5:00 am to shower, do my hair, makeup, dress in something wonderful and consider breakfast. Breakfast was kind of an add on if I had enough time. If it didn’t happen at home, it happened on the run at Starbucks between the parking garage and the office. An oatmeal and a cappuccino or a muffin and a no whip HC. Sometimes, it was an HC with my boss as we solved the problems of the day before the day officially started.

I liked to leave the house by 6:30 am and get to the office by 7:30 when I worked for USAToday in Salem, which was 53 miles away or 7ish if I worked at The Oregonian in downtown Portland, twelve miles away.

I used to stress a lot about upcoming presentations or client calls. I was owned by the company I worked for. A half million-dollar deal was no big deal. Now, I think about what I will write next, how the option with the movie company is going, and if the ads are working. A good sales day of a few hundred bucks is a big deal.

Now, if I’m dressed in my jeans and a t-shirt, and fed by 8:30 am, life is good. But then my bedtime is much different. I used to be in bed by 11 pm and I’d fall asleep quickly, now that stretches to 1 am and I don’t sleep well.

You see the thing is, I used to write after work and on the weekends, so my favorite time to write is still in the evenings and on weekends. I am probably twice as creative at midnight than noon. It is an odd thing. I’ve tried to change it, but it doesn’t work.

Some books are easy to write and only take twenty-one days, others take a year. Which one is better? Ironically, when I wrote a book in twenty-one days, I felt a little possessed.

What advice would I give to a writer who wants to have a journey similar to mine? It is the same that it once was, just what Nora Roberts used to say: butt in the chair. I would like to add: hands on the keyboard.

I can’t tell you how many people tell me that they have a book in them. I think writing a book is a common dream, but when faced with blank pages, the dream feels like a nightmare. Sometimes I’m told I should write the book about someone’s life. No, I shouldn’t, they should. I like to write fiction. I have a rule, all thoughts need to come from me. I don’t like to plot with others. I like to own my ideas. And really, no one’s life is interesting unless they cured a major disease or saved a baby or a puppy.

How do I feel about my life? Do I have the same feeling? Yes. I think my life is movie worthy, but that is only my thought. Well, snippets appear in each book. I was severely cross-eyed until I was twenty-three, and people judged me. My Enchanted is about a woman with a scar on her face and how she is perceived by others. CRUSH is a businesswoman who isn’t taken seriously but is constantly trying to do her best and come up with new and different ideas. My neighbors started overstepping their boundaries and saying nasty things to me about my ownership of my family beach house like that I was an absentee owner. They admitted to trespassing on my land. And over the three weeks it took to build my seven-foot cedar fence between us to not only keep them out but to put up boundaries, I wrote The Poison Garden about nasty neighbors. Each of these books has been therapeutic to my soul. Messages that only I know, but hopefully speak volumes to others.

So, is my new life hard? Yes, but it is the kind of hard where I excel. So, my larger question is, Are you living your dream?