Happy New Year–let’s catch up!
I don’t blog as often as I’d like but I hope to change that in 2025. I’m changing a lot of things in the coming year. I’ve been a published writer for thirty-one years and I’ve mostly loved every minute of my career. I love writing stories that entertain, encourage, and enlighten readers. But last year, I hit a wall. Or more like I hit a hole in the wall. I didn’t get writer’s block because I still have so many ideas for books I want to write. I think I hit writer’s lock–where I literally stopped in mid-sentence and thought something has to change. I’m a doer. I take on things and some I’m good at, some not so much. I like to help, I like to contribute, but when we moved to Florida over a decade again, I decided I’d just write. All day, all the time. I became content with having back-to-back deadlines and one or two day vacations. I buried my troubles in my stories which helped make them all the more real. This worked most of the time, but in that one moment when things shifted, I realized I needed to stop and think things through, make a few changes, try some new adventures in writing before I just gave up and retired. We had a house near the Gulf of Mexico, but during Covid, we bought a small fixer-upper house on a beautiful inland lake. But the yard looked like a jungle. I fell in love with the quirkiness of the lake house and after a couple of years of going back and forth from the big house to the lake house, we decided to move to the lake.
So this year, we’ve been unpacking and renovating and I’ve been writing, but things seem different now. The pace here is slower, the neighbors are friendly, and life is just more simple. I’ve finished all my contracted books and took a couple of months off, but the road is wide open now. Which fork will I take? I haven’t decided yet, but I do know I’m not getting any younger! As Jimmy Buffet sang, “I have boats to build.” I have books to write and maybe I’ll get them all down on the page even if my pace is slower and my choices are different. I have books to write and I have this spot, this blog, to come to when I need to talk to all of you. There are ebbs and flows in the ocean and the lake. There are ebbs and flows in life, too. Right now, I’m drifting and enjoying my surroundings. I’ve had a wonderful career with several publishing companies and I’ve had a lovely time getting to know my readers, too. So I’m not bitter or resentful. I’m content and thankful, and it feels strange to be so still and not on a deadline. But..and this is a big but…yesterday on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I opened up a story I’d started a year or so ago and started writing again. For myself, for my sense of discipline–something every writer needs–for that urge to make up a story and find out how it will end–also something every writer needs. Going throught this writer’s lock, or the hole-in-the-wall full stop, got me wondering if other people, not matter their careers, suddenly look up and realize something has to change. Has this ever happened to you?
Meantime, I do have a book coming out next summer and a novella next Christmas. So don’t write me off just yet! I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places….Happy New Year!
