Welcome

From dreamer to doer…aspiring to actual author. Thanks for joining me on this wild ride!

Vulnerability is Scary

I grew up in a slightly dysfunctional family system. If you know anything at all about family systems, you know this isn’t an indictment of my family, it’s just a truth universally acknowledged that a… Wait. That’s Jane Austen, preparing to introduce my favorite of all the dysfunctional families- the Bennett’s.

The point: all families are a little dysfunctional. We’re human and no family is perfect. Your family wasn’t perfect back when you were growing up and it isn’t perfect now. Mine sure isn’t!

Oh perfectionism. The thing I have spent an inordinate amount of time chasing, only to fall short, to crash, burn, and spend way too much time disliking myself.

And then I learned something profound. I learned that sharing my vulnerabilities made me a better person. A better woman, better wife, better mother, better friend.

And there is NOTHING more vulnerable than sharing your writing with an audience for a recovering perfectionist. I strongly suspect that I’ll see the same return on investment. And if I can bring myself to share my imperfect writing with y’all, many facets of myself will improve, the least of which is my grasp of the writing craft.

Thanks for joining me on the journey!

A Decades Long Goal

It’s 2011, I’m sitting in a large lecture hall in the business college (no idea why they put our education class THERE) and the instructor has us preform an exercise. It’s probably one you’ve heard of before, maybe you’ve even done it.

On a blank sheet of paper, write down these headings:

1 Year

5 Years

10 Years

Under each heading take some time to write 1-2 goals.

What I wrote for 1 and 5 years, I cannot remember. What I do remember vividly is that I was absolutely certain that I would BE a published author in 10 years.

13 years later…

I’m 33, a mom to five amazing children, and have not pursued my goal of publishing full length novels.

Did I fail?

Nope.

Time doesn’t have to be linear

10 years is a nice, even number for the human brain to think about. Also, 10 years feels impossibly far away when you’re 21 and in college. It honestly felt more like a 100 year goal. Despite the headings making it look neat and simple, life happened in the interim and I didn’t follow my proposed timeline.

Here’s what happened:

At 23 I had a baby and began writing freelance. One of the ideas I came up with while freelance writing made me more excited than anything I’d ever written.

Life happens for the next seven years and I have 4 more babies.

At 31 I remember that idea from my freelance work brainstorms and it won’t leave me alone, so I begin writing a full length novel

At 32 I finished my very first rough (AND I MEAN rough!) draft of a full length novel

At 33 I began pursuing publication options while simultaneously raising five children, and editing what will be my debut novel one day

*we are currently here

What do I mean about linear time? Pick up your copy of The One and the Many (a Catholic metaphysics textbook) and you’ll find out. Actually what I really mean is- we have ideas about time and goals. But sometimes things are best thought of in a cyclical pattern, circling back around to hit deeper with each rotation. That’s exactly what happened for me and my novel- with every pass, this story has become… more.

Photo by Fang-Wei Lin on Unsplash

Follow along for literary laughs

I promise I’m not going to spam you. But when you subscribe to this newsletter you’ll get an email from me twice a month with some literary jokes, a recanting of the humorous things I’ve dealt with as a mom who is also writing, updates on my publication progress and some insight into my WiPs!

WiP: Reach (62,500 words)

Reach is a YA dystopian novel featuring a male main character by the name of…Reach. In a science obsessed government society Reach has to navigate power plays on the part of government officials while trying to protect the ones he loves. Oh, and did I mention the government doesn’t think he’s completely human?

---