The Journey of Writing

What started as an exhausted mom enjoying the quiet of early morning before the chaos of the day ensued, turned into a daily date with an unfolding story. I eagerly awoke and tiptoed downstairs as I made my cappuccino and set up my writing space. Being a "pantser" I write with no plan and no outline. I shut down my conscious thinking and dive into a world of make believe and sit back to see what happens. Watching the story and characters unfold became a quiet internal journey I took every day before the sun rose- a journey not even my husband knew I was taking.

It was a fun secret, a few hours where I did something that was meant only for me. As the short story began building and expanding, the 300 pages that stared back at me was whispering that it might want to be told out in the open someday. I wrote for myself, to try and make sense of the difficult parts of life. I could never actually put that out in the world for others to read- could I ?

I confessed nervously to my husband, then my sister, then my stepdaughter, and then... I faced the hardest part of this whole process: Admitting that you want to be a writer. That's it, right there. Getting to that moment is the scariest part. Actually believing that it is never too late to take an adventurous leap and that you have what it takes to get your art published is a transformative moment.

I wrote with the intention that these words would never be seen by another soul, and to present them to the world in hopes that they might speak deeply to someone else the way they did to me is frankly terrifying. But I have never been comfortable being comfortable so here I am. Everyday pushing myself to do more, dig deeper, and discover what adventures might be waiting for me when I kick that comfort zone to the curb.