Flash Nano/Nanowrimo 2021 Final Update

November is over. I certainly didn’t write every day, nor did I ‘win’ Nanowrimo. However, I wrote twenty-four stories in thirty days. So I definitely did well. My final word count was 10213. I accomplished my goal, which was to write as many pieces of flash fiction as possible, on as many days as I could.

At first, I didn’t see myself getting anywhere close to a story a day. Honestly, I would have been happy with 5 or 6. You can imagine how thrilled I am to end up with as many as I did.

Some days I wrote more than one story and other days I didn’t even look at my pencil. There were plenty of times I didn’t think I had a story in me at 11 pm but decided to try anyway and got great stuff out of it. The main thing is I didn’t let myself stand in my own way, though I tried a few times.

I hope to keep up this momentum and keep cranking out fiction but not every day. I don’t want to burn myself out again after finally waking up my muse again.

I’ll probably keep the same schedule of writing as I did all month: writing late. During the day I work on making plushies and bags so there isn’t time to write then. In the mornings I suffer through allergy hell, which delays the start of my workday. It’s not smart to work with needles and machinery when you can’t see through tears. I bought some eye drops that might help but nothing else has so I don’t have a lot of confidence there.

My allergy crying normally stops around lunchtime so I think I’ll try writing in the mornings again as well as late at night. I could type with my eye closed so difficulty seeing the keyboard or monitor isn’t an issue. If I want to write manually I can keep using a pencil. Tears can only do so much damage and my handwriting is horrendous so not much change there.

Now that I have a little confidence back I need to work on motivation and discipline.

So, for me, Nanowrimo and Flash Nano 2021 were both successes. I got what I wanted out of it and I’m happy. Hopefully next year there will be in-person events and even more stories. Until then I’ll keep writing and updating.

Flash Nano Update Day 14

Flash Nano is going pretty well for me. I haven’t managed to write a story every day but I did write 16 stories in thirteen days. This is the most my muse has been active in a long time. I don’t know my word count because I didn’t count the last 3 or 4 stories but I doubt I’m over 5000.

Nanowrimo word counts mean nothing to me now. They haven’t in several years. What I look for every November is to get back to writing regularly. I especially need it this year.

After all the things that happened to stop me from writing, I could really use this. What a confidence boost it is to write so much! Obviously, I don’t expect to write every day from now on but I do hope I’ll find a way to write as often as I can. For so long I wanted to write but couldn’t. Now I can write but I lack my previous discipline. I’m headed in the right direction thanks to this challenge.

As for the content, well, I don’t love every story but there are a few real gems in there. The ones I don’t love have potential (except one). Even the one I wrote that isn’t truly flash could turn into a great longer story. If I have trouble coming up with a new story any time during the rest of the month I intend to add to that starter.

The most encouraging thing to happen is I keep finding myself coming up with new ideas, plot twists, etc for novels I started before my time of tribulation, otherwise known as the two-ish years gabapentin fogged up my head, stole my concentration, and smothered my muse. I thought I’d never get back to those stories. I’m not all the way there but finding new ways to mess up my protagonists’ lives is amazing!

I’ll post a couple more updates before the end of the month. I’ll even take the time to count my words by then. Maybe.

Flash Nano Update

I’m writing! Since this is the first steady writing to come out of me in a very long time, I’m a bit overly excited about it. I can’t say I’m anywhere close to Nanowrimo word count goals but who cares? Not me.

Six stories in as many days are sitting in my spiral waiting for me to edit them (after Nano is finished). That’s something to celebrate for me. Even better, they don’t all suck. Some do. One, in particular, is complete trash, but I like most of them. Each one gives me something to work with. You can’t make a story great if you don’t have anything written.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to write a piece of flash fiction every day this month but I know I’ll try. Accomplishing this so far gave my confidence a huge boost. The more confidence I have in my ability to write, the more I will write.

Also, I finished a book! It’s the first one in probably a year. I’m halfway through the next. I got so into this one I’ve been reading it while on the elliptical at the gym. In fact, reading while on that machine has enabled me to ignore the clock, and each day I go for a little longer. Bonus!

I feel like I’m getting myself back again. My muse is more active and I’m thinking about stories more often. I was running through ideas while grocery shopping yesterday. When I took a break to eat lunch I ended up writing a very short piece of flash fiction. 121 words, which I will edit down to a 100-word story. The story absolutely had to come out of me right then in the middle of the day while out and about. That hasn’t happened in two years, at least!

So everything is going well. My grand total word count is only 2,872 but it feels like a million. Fingers crossed I’ll have hundreds more to update you on later in the month!

On a side note, I got to use the word ‘haboob’ in a story

Nanowrimo/Flash Nano 2021

It’s been a while, but I’ve decided to participate in Nanowrimo this year. I almost didn’t because I simply didn’t have any ideas, and I haven’t written regularly in a long time. It’s difficult for me to believe I could actually succeed, so I had a why bother attitude.

Then a friend in my writing group told me about Flash Nano. The intent is to write a piece of flash fiction every day in November. My interest was peaked. I’m still nervous because this slump has had its claws in me for so long, but it’s not as scary as trying to write a 50,000-word novel at this point.

Flash fiction stories appeal more right now. Let’s examine the benefits for someone in my position.

• Writing 1000 words or less in a day is less terrifying
• Finishing a short work gives a sense of accomplishment which raises my confidence level
• Flash fiction ideas come from all over so there are more chances I’ll find something to write about
• I already know how to write flash fiction which leads to…
• Once upon a time I wrote flash all the time and I was good at it, which goes back to confidence
• Assuming I only worry about one story at a time I won’t get overwhelmed
• There are many more bullets I could add but I’ll end with writing flash (for me specifically) is the most likely way I’ll get back to writing regularly

My writing funk/slump/block/whatever the hell you want to call it started with a medication making me cloudy and forgetful. I got off that medication, but my current one has a similar if lesser effect on me. This I can probably work through, but there are other issues. I also can’t seem to read. I was always a reader and I adore books. Stories are magic for me. When the concentration issues began, I had trouble getting through a book. Eventually, it became a chapter, working its way to a time thing. I can’t focus on reading for longer than about 10 minutes.

If you don’t read, you can’t write. Not well. In my case, I think it became more literal. Man, did that suck! Then there is the mental toll a problem like this exacts. The horrid cycle seemed never-ending.

Things are slowly changing. Recently I read 40% of a book in a couple of hours. Not long after, I wrote a few flash fiction pieces. I finished that book a couple of nights ago. Then, last night starting at midnight at the Nanowrimo kickoff event, I wrote a 718-word story. There has to be a correlation for me.

I didn’t know what I was going to write about when I started. Nothing was mapped out or even thought about beforehand.

My only prep was while the Zoom call was going and others were talking about what they would write, I looked through some writing prompts. If they interested me, I wrote them on the first line of a new page in a spiral and went to the next page. I ended up with eight prompts but most didn’t spur any ideas beyond the obvious images the prompt seemed meant to invoke. However, there were a couple I almost believed could work.

I say almost because I had no faith in my ability to ‘make shit up’ at this point. Nevertheless, I was determined to try.

So I picked the one my must kept tossing at me. Honestly, of the ones I thought I could write about, this one seemed the least promising.

Rae sat atop the piano waiting for the music to start

When I first read it, I felt a glimmer of a spark, which I quickly dismissed. I kept making my way through my list, but I kept thinking about that stupid piano. I did NOT want to write about a lounge singer. I would not. I had a different prompt all picked out, and at 11:58, I turned back to Rae and stared at my page in disgust. I can only hope I didn’t make the face that matched my feelings because Zoom picks up everything.

Midnight hit and the ML said to start, and I did precisely that. I didn’t know what was going to come out of me, but if it had to be about a singer in a red dress in a smoke-filled room getting ready to sing to a gangster or some shit, I would write it. I was desperate to get any amount of words on the paper.

I’m pretty sure I held my breath as I wrote my first sentence following the prompt. To my surprise, more sentences followed. They kept coming. The story grew and changed and exploded out of me. I wrote with a pen because I thought I might write out the bones of a story, and I like to do that freehand.

My ballpoint pen annoyed me, so I switched to a gel pen. I found myself making a mess on my page, so I grabbed a pencil. What a strange sensation it was using a writing utensil I never use!

The smoke-filled room I dreaded never made an appearance. No singing was heard by my characters. Red dress? I have no clue; I didn’t have time for much description. I was too busy writing what happened as opposed to how it looked. I couldn’t get the words out fast enough. My story centered around ghostly music and a woman trying to solve the mystery of what she heard. There is nothing ‘expected’ about it, which suits my style.

I won’t claim it is the best story I ever wrote, but it is undoubtedly the most satisfying piece I’ve done in a long time. Because I wrote it. I wrote something, anything. More importantly, I wrote a complete story with potential. I find it intriguing, and it will be fun to expand on eventually. I’m sure I’ll pick it apart and destroy it later because I’m a writer. It’s my job to over criticize everything I do. For now, I’ll be happy.

Words are in me, trying to get out. Look at this post, with three times as many words than necessary! I need to keep finding ways to access them. I’m hoping Nanowrimo and Flash Nano will help me.

If I can work up the nerve, I’ll post my story sometime this week but don’t hold your breath. Breaking through shaken confidence is hard! To anyone out there doing Nanowrimo, good luck! Don’t stress, just write.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Everything Update

Writing: I’m getting there. Slowly. For over a year, I haven’t written much due to some awful side effects of a medication I kicked to the curb. We’re talking depression, mental fog, irritability (no, not all of that can be blamed on gabapentin), next to no ability to concentrate, and straight-up memory loss. There were more issues, but I only listed the most troublesome.

Sounds like a medical update, right?  The point is, now I’m on a new medication (since August), and all of the bad side-effects are gone. I hoped I would jump back into writing right away, but it was not to be. Turns out, I didn’t instantly get back my hard-earned discipline and great writing habits!

I will. Writing every day isn’t an option for me anymore, but I’m working on writing every day I can. It comes in spurts. I do writing exercises as often as my muse shows up though the real issue is a ‘butt in chair’ issue. Technically I’m in the chair, but getting started is difficult. Part of it is the bad habit of not writing. However, I know myself well enough to know the true problem is fear.

What if I can’t do it anymore? What if the meds stole my muse like they did my memory? What if I Can do it again but I suck? Blah, blah, typical writer self-abuse. Yet, this time it’s scarier. There is a sprinkling of reality in my fears. For a year, I really couldn’t do it anymore. My muse was non-existent, and the few times I got words on paper, THEY SUCKED! I know things are different now, but until I write something good, I’ll worry. Then I’ll worry some more.

This is going to be a long hard road for me. All I can do is try. I need to find my writing discipline/motivation/inspiration again. Perhaps writing blog posts again will help. When I post here, I don’t really worry if it is well written or follows elements of style or reads like a term paper with proper paragraph usage. I simply think with my fingers and the mess you’re reading flows out.

Take this post, for example. I knew I was going to write an update, but I didn’t have any particular plan. I didn’t even know where to start. It took me ten minutes to type the first sentence, but once I did, 400 words came out (and counting).

Which leads me to the next update:

Blog: I plan to write more blog posts. As of now, I don’t know what they will be about. I do want to work on my compound sentence issue. Grammarly lets me know it hates me every time I use one. It also tells me this post sounds disapproving.

One of my goals is to write and post at least one piece of flash fiction or a short story every month. At one point, I was writing and posting close to a hundred. I won’t pressure myself to get back to that level. Not yet, anyway. I do hope to get into some kind of regular rhythm though. I have a huge list of ideas to work with so I’m not as nervous as I could be.

Expect a lot of opinions because I still have those and I’m sure my husband and my best friend are tired of being my only outlet for them.

Perhaps a rant of two? Definitely some ramblings about writing, life, people, etc.

Medical: Life sucks, whatever. I’m tired of bitching about it.

Everything else: 1. My husband and I are binging Grimm. This is pertinent because it involves a lot of fairy tale creatures. Two of my biggest projects involve mythical beasties. One for adults and one for children. Every time we watch an episode (or four in a row), I feel inspired. So far, this has manifested in notes and ideas for my stories but no serious writing yet.

2. There is a comic convention coming to my city at the end of February, and I always get enthusiastic about those. Enthusiasm equals happy muse.

3. I got a new desk. A huge executive desk. The kind I’ve wanted for years (ever since I had to give up my last big desk). It takes up most of the space in my office because I placed it squarely in the center! Every time I manage to get any writing done, it’s while sitting at my perfect desk. Did I mention I love my desk?

That’s all for now. Hopefully, my next update will be more writerly!

Nanowrimo 2018 Update (Late)

Well, I didn’t win Nanowrimo. I didn’t expect to get 50,000 words written in thirty days. What I wanted was to get back into a good almost daily writing habit. In this, I did win!

I don’t write on my husband’s midweek day off or on Saturdays (most of the time), but I always intended to the rest of the week. By participating in Nano, I’m back to doing just that. Even if it’s only 300 – 500 words, I’m writing regularly again.

Sometimes it sucks to sit and write, due to pain issues, but I do it anyway. Yes, I’ve had bad days where I accomplished a whole lot of nothing. But most days I work through the pain.

One thing that helps is some days I work on the class I’m taking, and other days it’s straight writing. Today was a little of both. I wrote about 300 words and finished an entire lesson (those usually take a few days). Maybe I would have written more if I hadn’t done the coursework, but both are important to me, so I’m satisfied with what I chose.

Tomorrow a new lesson will be available, so I’ll probably work mostly on it with a little writing sprinkled in. I also have to do grocery shopping, and it’s just as likely I’ll do less than I plan.

Friday there is the potential for terrible weather and horrid driving conditions. As the people in my town lose their minds and driving abilities with even the tiniest bit of precipitation on the ground, I’ll probably stay in and write all day. After the winter Library sale, that is. There is a chance of cancellation due to the weather, so I’ll be closely watching the news. If they do cancel, I’ll have no excuse not to write though.

I’m hoping to find good copies of urban fantasy series. It’s for research! If my research is fun, that’s not a problem, right?

This week, I’ll probably write on Saturday too. Something about cold weather brings out my muse. I hope it stays true to form. I am still trying to plot the story I’m working on. The middle is giving me trouble.

I wrote the beginning and some of the end during Nanowrimo, but new ideas changed my original loose plotting. Now I need to figure out how to get from point A to point B with many characters, using no straight lines.

I don’t do outlines unless you count using index cards and pinning them on a board an outline. I’m sure if I did do a ‘real’ outline I’d know exactly where I was going and writing the story would be a breeze. Except there would be no magic, no fun — no room for change or growth in the story.

Serious plotting works for some people but not me. I like to let my muse be as free as possible while giving it at least a direction to start with.

I’ll try to post an update on my efforts soon.

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Sidenote: I use Grammarly, which I love, and it told me I ended two sentences with prepositions. 1. Sorry to anyone this annoys, but it’s the way I speak. This is just a blog post. If it were a story, I wouldn’t have ignored the suggestions to fix it. 2. I love this program because there are things I don’t notice myself doing while I’m trying to get the words out. So it’s good there is something to help me notice my flaws, such as the preposition thing, and my overuse of compound sentences, or certain words. In fact, it pointed out I used the word notice too much in this post as I typed this paragraph!

Also, I picked the image above because I hope the story I’m writing will feel this way when read.

Nanowrimo Update

Three thousand, six hundred fifty-two words. Sound low? It is if your goal is to win Nanowrimo. For me, this is a great number. It means I’m writing. I’ve put some words on paper almost every day since the beginning of the month.

Plus, I started out handwriting everything. I only switched to typing last night at my region’s first write-in. So I’m not doing so bad.

Winning would be great but that’s not my goal. My goal is to get back into a regular writing routine. Ideally, I would write at least four days a week. I don’t want to work on my husband’s days off because he has a weird work schedule and we get little time together except those two days a week.

On Saturday my muse thinks it’s time to crawl under a mental rock and hide. It frustrated me at first but now I enjoy having time to myself with no expectations. However, for the rest of this month, I plan to try to write every day, if only for thirty minutes to an hour. Chronic back pain will make it hard, but I if I don’t attempt it, I’ll be disappointed in myself.

I’m trying not to have a word count goal but my brain is stuck on half. If I can reach 25,000 words I’d probably be satisfied.  If I write about 900 words a day I’ll get there.

I’ll post another update on my progress soon.

Nanowrimo Prep and Story Update

For the first time in a while, I’m excited about Nanowrimo. October is prep month. Most years I prep about a week or two before November 1. This time it’s different. As mentioned in my last post, I am working on a writing class from Holly Lisle. My new idea for a story fits in nicely with the course. Even better, is the timing.

The class starts with coming up with an idea, which I already had, then slowly expanding on it. Characters first, then conflict. There are seeds of setting as well but I’m not focusing on that yet.

Where the timing is great is the lesson I’m on, and the next, is I’m starting to write scenes. I don’t know how many I’ll have by the time Nano starts but it will be a great launching point. This class is a long, slow one but it’s perfect for me while doing the crazy competition with myself in November!

At this point, I still don’t think I’ll win Nanowrimo but I know I’ll write more than I have in quite some time. Who knows, I may blow it out of the water.

What I have story wise right now is:

• An interesting protagonist named Reagan
• An antagonist (I’m deciding if he’s interesting)
• An overall villain for the series
• A best friend with a friendship ending secret
• A coworker with an even bigger secret that affects the lives of entire races of supernatural beings
• A father who is not a father
• Ken the Wizard who is not what he seems
• A child in danger
• A bound ghost (which doesn’t look like it fits but does, unless I change my mind)

At least three of those people have memory issues, which is a theme across several stories. Even the ghost might not know who she is, but I have until book three to decide. Sounds excessive right? It is, but there is a good reason for it and it all goes back to one big gem. It’s not precisely a McGuffin. What a lie! In the first book, it kind of is, but only one person is actively trying the get it. No one else knows they need it.

None of the mentioned secrets are revealed in the first book. Right now, I have three strong story ideas so the series will be at least a trilogy. The first book is all about Reagan figuring out what she is and how to master her magic. Also, it’s about her dying her hair a lot. And fruit trees.

The second book is about the aftermath of the person from book one getting that gem. Secrets start coming out and relationships change. There is a lot of anger, recriminations, and lightning.

Book three starts with the ghost and moves on to Reagan discovering the other two secrets and the losses they cause. Also, she might lose her humanity. And there is a satyr.

I’ll keep you all updated as I progress through the story and Nanowrimo. I may overload this blog with word count updates but it helps me with accountability. To anyone else prepping for November, good luck! I’d love to see your updates as well.

 

 

 

 

Everything Update – 06/24/2018

Writing: I’m still working on my new project and I’m deep in character development. I did a little index card plotting and have a basic idea of where the story is going but the more I work on individual characters, the more interesting the story gets.

I haven’t written any scenes yet but will soon. I was in a writer’s funk (not quite a block) for so long I think I’m afraid to jump into actual writing. At this point, I’m happy to be working toward something rather than fretting about not writing.

The story is urban fantasy. I previously worked mostly on high/epic fantasy, which I love to read. The problem is I hate world building. I don’t have the patience for it.

With urban, obviously you have to world build but not to the same extent as high or epic fantasy. I enjoy writing high fantasy short stories, but I’m sticking with more modern settings for my longer stuff now.

Reading: The Dresden Files. There are other series I like better but I’m enjoying this one. I’m on the seventh book. Each time I finish one and pick up another I swear I can feel my ‘to-read’ pile glaring at me. However, since this is research I don’t feel too guilty.

If anyone has any suggestions for urban fantasy series, please share them with me. I’ve read Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews along with what I’m reading now but that’s it.

Medical: I got another injection in my back last week. It’s amazing. There is no perfect relief from this kind of pain but it’s enough that I can sit at my desk and work for longer so I’m satisfied for now. Plus I’m going on vacation soon so I’m glad I did this now.

Vacation: We’re going to Colorado this year instead of New Jersey. My in-laws are meeting us there. I like going to their home to visit but it means a three-day car ride. This year, we only have to drive eight hours! My lower back will be thanking me.

Going to a new setting will be great for my writing. Every vacation is a working one when you’re a writer. Yet it doesn’t feel like work when you’re excited about a story!

Writing two: I plan to write flash fiction stories set in the world of my new project. Once I have a few I’ll start posting them.

That’s all I have for now. I hope to post more often soon!

My Writing Journey, Part 2

To read Part 1 click here.

Ah, the teenage years. What a beautiful, crazy, terrible nightmare they were. I could tell a million stories from that time, but I’ll stick to the writing-related stuff for the sake of brevity.

I didn’t often write back then. Like most teens, I was crippled with self-doubt and unexplained fears. How on earth did we all survive blushing almost daily? It was during these formative years that I had a lot of serious upheavals and changes.

When I was thirteen, my parents divorced. This was both painful and welcome. They hadn’t gotten along for years, so we all knew it was necessary. The hard part had to do with being a daddy’s girl. There was a time I would have done anything to please my father, but I was learning that he was human and I didn’t like it.

He was an alcoholic, which I barely understood and probably affected me the least of all of my family since I was the youngest and his favorite. In the days leading up to my mom leaving him, I finally saw some uncomfortable truth. My dad was a high functioning alcoholic, as in he came home, drank a lot of beer and you couldn’t see much change. However, he was an a-hole when he was really drunk, but like most heavy drinkers, it was even worse when he wasn’t drinking.

I need to clarify that I was the one who couldn’t see much change when dad drank. I was young, dumb, and oblivious. My mother and brothers definitely weren’t in the dark. In a way, this lack of knowledge made it harder when I saw the truth.

Anyway, I won’t go into too many details, but the night we left, my dad did the unforgivable. He slapped my mother. I may have been a daddy’s girl, but no one touches my mother. Even worse, in my barely teenaged mind, it was my fault. He was drunk and pissed off because of something I did that my mother punished me for.

I don’t remember what stupid crap I’d pulled, but I do remember I deserved to be in trouble. All she did was ground me, but I was his baby, and I don’t know if he assumed I hadn’t done anything or if he thought she was too harsh. It doesn’t matter, he had no right to do what he did. Hell, he didn’t have the right to be yelling at her for it.

The words and images are fuzzy for me except the look on his face when I screamed at him. The shock and betrayal in his expression are still clear in my mind. Sitting here, writing this I keep thinking ‘he felt betrayed, what about us?’

My mom was smart enough to use the interruption to get the hell out of there. She grabbed me and my older brother and took us to her sister’s house. She filed for divorce soon after.

I need to backtrack a moment. My dad was a good man, once. He treated me like a princess and loved me with everything he had. He treated my mother well too, in the beginning. He didn’t treat my brothers the same, but I don’t know if that was the beer or just how he was.

Alcoholism messes people up, and he’d been that way for most of his adult life. Part of me believes if he’d ever completely given up beer, he might have become the man he should have been. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

Once they split up, I picked up a pen again. I wrote about my feelings and then tore up the paper into confetti, every time. It helped. Life settled into a routine for a while. Then my mom started dating someone.

I was happy for her until I met him. His name was David, and I hated him, instantly. This was no teenager issue, though my mom thought it was. No, I got a bad feeling from him. I’d only gotten this feeling with one other person, and it turned out my gut was right that time. So, in all my experience and wisdom I told my mom how uncomfortable he made me. She produced the knowing smile adolescents everywhere hate and kept doing what she was doing.

Everyone assumed I would hate the first guy she dated because he wasn’t my dad. HA! Little did they know my ‘bad feeling’ was never wrong. The guy turned out to be a pig, which is the nicest thing I can say about the man. As a side note, years later, I ran into this man at the local mall, where I worked (I was 18 or 19). He told me how much I looked like my mother, how he missed her, and then hit on me! GROSS!

I occasionally pick on my mother for not listening to me, but my choice in men was much worse for a few years so I keep it to a minimum.

Not long after dumping the jerk, she met my future step-dad. I liked him right away. He was weird as hell, had a dry sense of humor, and he adored mom. No bad feelings cropped up, so I was happy for her. They got married in October 1988, and we moved from our tiny little town to the bigger city ten miles away.

It might as well have been a hundred miles. I wasn’t sad to move, but I was sad to leave my friends. I figured we still see each other often, but it didn’t take long for everyone to move on. I loved and hated my new school. There were so many people! Unfortunately, some were little assholes. Some were amazing. I found the weird tribe and joined. I settled in and decided it could have been worse, then it was.

At the end of December, fifteen days after I turned 15, my dad died in a car accident. He was driving through New Mexico, on he way to El Paso to visit his parents. My brother and I were supposed to be with him, but we didn’t go. He was mad at both my brothers for something stupid and I was mad at him. On Christmas Eve, he yelled at me and told me I ruined Christmas because I defended my siblings. It was all so unimportant and silly, but we didn’t want to be around him when he was a jerk.

As you can imagine, I was a wreck. Grief and guilt consumed me. My relationship with my middle brother fell apart. He already resented me because I was dad’s favorite and was treated differently. Now that our father was gone, there was only me left to take the blame. My mother hardly knew what to do with me.

The years that followed are particularly painful for me, and I don’t want to rehash everything. I didn’t get arrested or do a bunch of drugs or anything like that, but there are some things I’ll never talk about again. I will say that I wrote more during this time than I ever had. I got angry at my mother often back then. She was very non-confrontational, and I am the opposite. It made me so mad when she wouldn’t fight! So I wrote her letters. I wasn’t capable calmly telling her how I felt and she wouldn’t let me yell it, so it was my only option.

Those letters, which she still has, changed my world. You wouldn’t believe how many drafts of each one I wrote. I cared about how well they were written. It bothered me to misspell something or if my grammar was off. I realized how much words mattered. I also learned that I could truly express myself with a pen.

Fear still ruled, but I’d taken steps in the right direction. Years later my mother told me she thought I should write after reading those letters because they were well written.

Remember when I used the word brevity at the beginning of this post? If you know me, I figured there would be some eye-rolls, well deserved.

Certainly, I wrote more than intended but sometimes the words have to come out. Thank you for sticking with me. In part 3, I’ll cover my failed marriages and bad choice in men. Those were the years that almost broke me and nearly killed my love of writing.

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Photo by Apollo Reyes on Unsplash