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Joy
I’ve been breastfeeding for 5 years and 8 months. Nursing is hard. It’s dedication. It’s like writing a book – one word at a time – but with your body – one drop at a time. I know prolonged nursing is taboo for a lot of people. I used to think it was weird. But here I am. Just letting it sink in tonight, knowing I’m almost done with this part of my life (Claire is almost weaned). But this journey…it’s like a lot of things in life: something big that is made of single moments stacked together. Something I fought for. I remember crying on the phone while giving…
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Writing for Passion
I started writing stories because I loved writing stories. It’s the way many people start in this field. I loved the world I had begun creating. I could get lost in it. Until I got lost in something else. In the past year I found myself not wanting to write as much, avoiding it almost. Writing wasn’t for me anymore, it wasn’t for the world or for the fun of it, it was because I had to write. Because I wanted this to be my job and I was running out of time before my kids were school aged and all of a sudden all of this pressure was cascading…
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Test Me
I’m going to say it: my college degree is useless for my life. Even when I worked in accounting I didn’t need my degree. I needed experience. When I was at community college I took philosophy and history and business courses and swimming and physics. I learned so much at community college. My world view changed not just because I went to multiple schools in multiple states, but because I was exposed to so much. Then I went through the upper division part — business school. I think I spent that time learning more about who I am, things I should have learned in regular school, than I did learning…
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Undiagnosed: I Might Be Dyslexic
I wanted to try something new. Something me. I hope this helps someone as I wander this world and try to make sense of myself. Without further ado, I present the first of many posts about neurodiveristy. I stand on the edge between two worlds: I am undiagnosed, and I don’t know if I want to be. I might be dyslexic, and you might think so too. I may not have someone telling me what I am, but I have never understood myself better. I’ve never been neurotypical. I’m gifted. I’ve always felt like the dumbest gifted person in the room. The dumbest smart person in the room. I have…
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On Mattering
We all swim in the same sea of people wanting to matter, voices wanting to be heard, and an endless search for validation. Without this community of people that believe in you, even if it’s just a little bit, it’s easy to fall into depressed feelings. Then there’s the other side – what if you have this big community but you feel alone? Both sides can be difficult, and social media makes both sides easy to find – emptiness and fulfillment. If you sign into social media you can see people with SO many followers. It’s hard to look at the numbers and know exactly how they got there. Was…
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Tautology
Noun. The saying of the same thing twice in different words. Dictionary.com I was some editing stuff and I wanted to get a few pages in, but I was hid hard and heavy with the word tautology and the example her own. There was no way I did this in my writing, right? WRONG. A quick search and I had seven (in 20k words). I had just gotten used to the problem of using just too much, and using too many ellipses (…). Alas, I want to be a better writer, so here we go – down tautology lane. What are some key ones you can add to your round…
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Zombie Days
Some days suck. Writing doesn’t flow, thinking doesn’t flow, existing doesn’t flow. Those days are brutal. Those days are the days you HAVE TO have a win – and when productivity is refusing to be anything but constipated and annoying, you just have to figure out one thing you can do. Why do I force it? Because bad days prelude to bad weeks. Bad weeks prelude bad months. If you don’t, at some point, just say “I’m doing this, the end,” then you might never do it again, or by the time you do you’ve wasted so much time you have to scrap what you were doing. So here I…
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Origin | Nell
It began in 2013, with a drawing. Or maybe it began long before that – when a young girl (about 7 years old) heard, “I will always buy you all the books you want,” I found my way to the mythology section. I had discovered a new type of heaven. I filled my basket with a variety – Irish, Scottish, Welsh, English, Classic…Some were new books, some were used. In the end, my basket was so heavy it grazed the floor as I lugged it to the front of the store, stopping every few steps. I made it, and my mom did not look thrilled. The price rang up over…
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On Drafts
It’s just a draft, I remind myself. Again and again. It’s just a draft. It’s not supposed to be good, or perfect. I know that. Everyone knows the first draft isn’t built to be what you present the world. Maybe it’s good, maybe it needs to be entirely redone. I’ve been dueling a new side to this – I have a polished advanced copy of Blue Note that I’ve been using as a mouse pad for the past week, and I have the roughest of drafts for The Last Salamander on my screen. I want perfect words to flow from my fingers, but TLS is still being molded into whatever…
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Why I DON’T Use Media Scheduling Programs
I’m not just an author. I run a business (my publishing house). I run the website, the social media accounts, the everything accounts – banking, emails, most of our URLs, everything. I have a million accounts I keep track of in a dozen places. It can be disruptive to my desire to write and be creative. Many people turn to scheduling bots, for good reason. But I believe in being 100% authentically, presently, me. For some people, the bots don’t degrade that. When I tried using them, I felt like I was doing something because I was supposed to, not because it felt right or I cared about it. I…