Getting Back to Writing

I’ve been away from writing for too long now. My husband and eldest sister have been working on me for months, if not a year, to start writing a book. I don’t feel like I have a book within me right now, but it is perhaps to come later, after I get back into writing.

This is the second-longest hiatus from writing that I have ever taken. The longest was in between college and moving to the U.S. That time, I was just busy – busy with school, new jobs after college, getting married and moving to a foreign country, starting my Masters degree, having a child, separating from my husband and moving back home….LIFE. There was simply no time to write, and sometimes hardly any time to breathe deeply or scratch my head.

My latest hiatus came after being asked by my husband (#2 ) to take a month’s break from writing for a newspaper I had been writing for, for five years. Since he was always so supportive of me and my writing, I felt it best to do as he asked and take a break. I think he knew what I was unwilling to admit – I was burnt out – tired of unsupportive editors who did not understand that I was part time and that my writing came behind homeschooling my grade school daughter. I was tired of having stories cut and radical changes made in my stories which were not justified by my editors. I was just tired. I had no love of writing anymore. No longer did I look forward to anything related to the paper. In December of 2008, I wrote my last ever story (articles are called stories by newspaper folks) for the local paper. A month later I was told that there were no longer any funds for freelance writers.

That year brought the challenge and satisfaction of writing for two magazines, both of which are now defunct. It brought better pay, longer feature stories, and a new outlook. I had lived my dream of being a journalist. Now I was living my dream of writing for magazines. Sadly, that was the only year I really ever wrote for any magazines. They were local, they were fun, and they were short-lived.

That year was a difficult year. In the midst of the thrill of writing for magazines came a great deal of sad times. My brother-in-law died suddenly. We lost a baby, after just a few months of deciding to try having one together. By the end of summer, all I could do was look forward to the start of a new calendar year.

With the new year came a new life. In October Baby K was born and 12 ½ years after becoming a mother for the first time, I became a mother all over again. That “baby” is now almost four, and I am itching to write once more. I now think about it weekly, without prompting from anyone, and it is as clear as the nose on my face that it is time. High time. Join me, in my ramblings of life, love and a labor of love. I have no idea what I will be writing about, but come what may, I hope you will ride alongside me – shotgun – as I traverse life with my family.