Having a tribe is very important when you’re a creative person. We need people to bounce our ideas off of, to be supportive of us, to be honest with us, to commiserate with us, to encourage us, to mentor us, etc…. They don’t even have to be located near us since we have email, internet, FaceBook groups, blogs, apps like Skype that allow us to communicate face to face and, of course, cell phones. We can meet in orchestrated or random ways. The thing is, we usually know each other as soon as we meet. I found my current tribe in 4 different places…Succulent Wild World, Rhapsody of Writing, The Sunday Night Writing Group and Divinely Wild Women. I know that if I am having a problem with my writing all I have to do is post it and within minutes, someone will usually respond. They might not have the answer but just the fact that someone read my post and cared enough to respond is amazing. We all need that in our lives. Being creative can be lonely and we often feel isolated even when we’re surrounded by people. Most of the people in our lives, no matter how supportive they are, will never understand our creative side or our struggles. Being creative is a bit like having multiple personalities. We have our creative side and then we have our “normal” side that we present to the non-creatives in our lives. I personally think that if those non-creatives could spend just an hour in our heads it would warp them forever. We are usually non-linear thinkers, we jump from one subject to another with little warning, we’re a bit ADD and OCD, and we always have more than a few of our brain’s browser tabs open.  Something totally random can send our brains spinning off in a hundred different directions.  Usually, it has to do with our current project but it could have also planted the seed for a future project.  We’re always thinking about what if this happened or if that didn’t happen; what if he did this and she did that.  Our Google searches could get us convicted of crimes or committed to a mental hospital if viewed by someone that isn’t a writer or doesn’t know that we are.  This is especially true for writers of thrillers and mysteries.  We talk to ourselves…and answer.  We even debate ourselves.  We work on dialogue out loud using different voices for our characters.  The books that we read when doing research can sometimes be bizarre and people tend to stare if we read them in public.  Responsible adults shouldn’t be reading about vampires, werewolves, ghosts, mythical creatures, or how to murder someone and get away with it.  We sometimes have to be coaxed out of our reverie when we’re out with others because we’re lost in thoughts about our characters.  You get the idea.  Basically, we’re not really what most people consider to be normal.  But, you know what?  I like how my brain works so I don’t care that others might think I’m strange or slightly unhinged.  Or that they tease me about being a daydreamer.  I don’t care because my tribe gets me.  They don’t think I’m odd or that daydreaming is a waste of time.  They just understand without me having to explain it to them.  And when the normal world gets to me, I can go play with the people in my tribe.  So, you really do need a tribe if you’re pursuing a life of creativity.  They’re out there waiting to be found so don’t waste any more time…get out there and start looking.  You’ll be glad that you did.   

“Let your weird light shine bright so the other weirdos know where to find you.” ~  Spirit Science   

It’s kind of magical to awaken with an extra hour.  I slept in this morning but still woke up on time.  Now tell me that’s not magical.  The question that begs to be asked and answered is how will we use that extra hour.  Will we waste it?  Use it for something special?  Will we just forget that it happened and go on with our day?  I’m using mine to write this blog and then print out Rapture and start the task of editing it.  I’ve done a little editing based on reading the 1st few pages out loud for ROW.  It’s amazing just how different your writing can sound when it’s read out loud rather than just hearing it in your head.  I found several ways to improve the flow by doing that.  I am going to print it out and read the whole thing out loud.  I’m hoping that by doing this, I will find any problems in the part that I’m basically happy with and find out where it flew off the rails when I was forcing the writing rather than letting it flow on its own terms.  I was more interested in finishing it than telling the story.  I put too much pressure on myself while doing that and it did not end well.  As I’ve said before, I know that there are some good portions so I have to mine those and weave them in when I begin to rewrite the book.  So, I’m feeling a little bit of dread and some excitement that I can move past the Frankenstein’s monster that I stitched together.  In ROW, for our next Retreat, we have to set a minimum, a median and a maximum for our work…this is taking into account what we want to accomplish with our project for each of those.  I’m working on mine.  It’s a little difficult to do that with my monster in the shape that it’s in.  Our next Retreat is the 17th, so I’m hoping to at least be at the point where I can begin the rewrite before then so that I can set realistic goals.  We all know that if we set goals and don’t reach them, we get discouraged and at least contemplate just forgetting them altogether…so we don’t want to set one that’s completely unrealistic.  But if you set them too low, we don’t have to stretch to reach them and that’s where the growth comes from.  So we want a goal that we have to stretch for but not that we have to be a quadruple-jointed contortionist to reach.  Just like everything else in life, it’s a bit of a juggling act.  We do something called Micro Movements, thank you, SARK, where we set a goal and then we lay out our micro-movements to reach it.  And, just as it sounds, we take small steps toward the goal so that we’re not overwhelmed but still make progress.  I’ll be filling out a few of those wheels for editing, rewriting and for my minimum, median and maximum for my book.  SARK has so many helpful tools that can be applied to everything in life.  If you aren’t familiar with SARK, Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, check her out.  Most of her books are available on Amazon as well as her website, PlanetSark.  I have been reading her books for years and I’m currently in her groups, Succulent Wild World (SWW), and Rhapsody of Writing (ROW).  She is a funny, open, warm, compassionate and caring mentor who truly cares for her students and wants them to reach their goals.  No, that wasn’t a paid advertisement for SARK.  I just really love her and her work.  Anyway, using her techniques, my maximum goal is to finish Rapture and get it published, as well as work on a sequel.  I don’t even want to set minimum and median goals.  I just need to figure out my timeline to reach that goal.  We all need goals in our lives…especially when it comes to our writing.  Without a goal, our writing will sit unfinished on our laptop just waiting for us to come back to it.  Today, right now, set a goal for your writing.  It doesn’t have to be a crazy one like you’ll have your book ready for a publisher in a week when it’s only half finished.  Set an easy one at first to get back into it…write for 30 minutes a day or make notes in your spare time that you’ll incorporate into your book on the weekends.  Just have goals and keep building on them as they are reached.  You can go a great distance by taking small steps as long as you don’t stop!  Try it and just see how far you can get.  It might just surprise you.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.  Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccesful men with talent.  Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.  Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.  Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” ~ Calvin Coolidge               

Today.  Today is the most important day of your life.  This is the point where you can decide to do, to be anything you want.  What will you choose for yourself?  Will you continue on as you always have, ignoring your dreams and desires?  Will you make the changes that you’ve been longing to make?  Will you make a decision that will change your life?  Every single day when you wake up, you can make a choice that will change your life, but will you be brave enough to do it?  Making changes is scary especially when they might actually change your entire life.  I am in the midst of making changes in my life and I’m not doing a very good job of implementing them…well, 1 of them.  Deciding to make a change and actually making the change are 2 separate and distinct things.  Once we actually make the change, our lives will be different in ways that we might not be able to comprehend so we hesitate, we think, we worry, we struggle with it, we embrace it, we reject it, we re-think it, we step back from it, and then we finally make the change.  At first, we might struggle with the difference the change brings but each day, it becomes a bit easier.  At least that’s what they tell us.  That has actually proven to be true with 1 of the changes…writing this blog.  When I decided to accept the 365-day blogging challenge, I didn’t think that there was any way that I could possibly be able to do it but I wanted to try.  At first, I struggled to come up with things to write about but over the last 30 days, it’s actually become easier because 99% of the time I am addressing my own concerns, aspirations, failings, etc…, so all of the conversations that I have with myself in my head are now being played out in this blog.  It’s actually been very helpful and a bit cathartic.  It’s helpful because I now know that I’m not the only 1 that has the doubts, feelings, failures, struggles, etc….  Writing is a solitary thing when you’re actually doing it but we do have a community, a tribe out there and this just reiterates that.  My choice that I’m most concerned about is the 1 that is most important to me.  I have been struggling to actually make the choice to rededicate myself to my writing…to make the time for it.  To finish my novel.  I’m struggling because, as I’ve said before when I get home from work, I just want to relax and shake the day off of me.  I don’t want to think anymore.  But I have to do this if I’m going to make my dream come true.  So, the choice that I’m making right now is to write every day even if it’s just 1 sentence.  I will have to hold myself accountable and I guess that I will also use this blog to occasionally announce my triumphs as well as my failures.  It will keep me honest…with myself and my tribe.  Without accountability and honesty, it’s much too easy to just slowly back away from the changes we’ve made.  I don’t want to do that…I’m not going to do that.  This is a choice that I’m not going to back away from again.  So what choices are you struggling to make?  You have the ability to decide whether a choice is in your best interest or not.  Just listen to what your Inner Wise Self tells you. (the Inner Wise Self is a SARK concept)  Trust in it.  Make your choices because no one else can do it for you.  Only you know what is right for you and what your dreams are.  Make the choice…you know that you want to.  It could change your life forever. 

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson    

There isn’t 1 perfect person on the face of the earth.  Everyone has flaws.  Everyone makes mistakes.  Everyone stumbles.  So why are we so ashamed of and mortified by our imperfections.  We work so extremely hard to hide them from the rest of the world as well as ourselves.  I’m as guilty of this as anyone.  I can honestly say that I am working on this but it’s taking a lot of baby steps to get to a point where I don’t feel the need to hide my imperfections from everyone.  I don’t hide my mistakes at work.  If I make a mistake and I figure it out before someone else does, I admit it and then fix it or vice versa.  But I do get angry with myself.  Why?  Because other people see my imperfection.  That’s my delusion…that others don’t know that I’m not perfect.  We work so hard at being perfect that we lose sight of what we’re doing.  We don’t take chances with our writing because it might be a mistaken notion and we don’t want to have to admit it or fix it.  I came out of the perfection closet on this blog when I admitted that I went down the wrong path with Rapture and that I’m going to have to backtrack in order to fix it.  I would love for it to have been perfect from the very beginning but not even the most talented writers have perfect first drafts.  Most of them will tell you to just write because the magic usually happens when you edit and do rewrites of the material.  Embrace your imperfections and just let your writing flow.  Don’t read or judge it until it’s done.  And when you do go back over it, don’t waste time by beating yourself up because there are typos and grammar mistakes or the flow doesn’t sound absolutely perfect.  Do what a writer does…fix the typos and grammar mistakes and figure out why it’s not flowing the way you want it to then do the rewrites.  Don’t beat your head against the wall and tell yourself that you’re a loser and a fake and that you should just give up on your dream because you have no talent.  1st, never give up on your dreams.  Dreams are what get us through the rough times, dark times, soul-sucking times, and just plain everyday life.  We need our dreams so hold on to them as tightly as you can and never voluntarily give them up.  2nd, every writer writes, edits, and rewrites their work.  It’s not that we don’t have talent, it’s just part of the process.  You aren’t a loser or a fake.  You are a writer.  So just be a writer.  Accept that you’re not perfect and that you will make a lot of mistakes while writing…that’s why there are erasers and backspace and delete keys.  When you are writing, you’re brain and creativity are in high gear and they have only 1 intention…get the words on the page.  Screw grammar, spelling, and punctuation because if you spend too much time worrying about those things, the words will just evaporate.  I’m not saying don’t try to do your best in those areas while getting your words onto the page…just don’t stress over them.  Turn off your internal censor/editor and just get the words out of your head!  If you do that, there will probably be a more pleasing flow to your writing because it’s more natural and organic.  Just remember, our imperfections are what make us unique and will differentiate us from others.  Embracing them is what frees us from the unrealistic expectations that we place on ourselves.   Just look in the mirror and tell yourself that you’re imperfect and that’s perfectly okay because everyone else is too.  Then go sit down and let your perfectly imperfect words flow onto the page.   

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” ~ Margaret Atwood                          

I spend a lot of time beating myself up about different things.  1 of those things is the fact that I started my novel 10 years ago and, as it currently stands, Rapture is a bit more than 1/3 complete…that’s an estimate based how many pages I have and the amount of detritus that I’m going to have to cut.  I haven’t had the resolve to open it up and start cutting yet.  I am saving that for the weekend.  I know that this is a process that all writers…published or not…go thru but that isn’t helping at this point.  I want to have it at least marked up by the end of the weekend.  That doesn’t sound like a lofty goal, but it is.  These are my words…well thought out or not.  I have to read it and then decide where it went flying at warp speed off of the rails.  Then I will need to pick through it to find any scenes that can be salvaged and move those to a safe place and work them in as I do the rewrite.  The funny thing is that we, as writers, can hear the false notes in our writing when we really listen.  It’s the choosing to really listen that is difficult to do.  We want to believe that what we write is gold or even silver but know deep inside that it’s not.  It’s a bit difficult to accept but we must in order to find and write the very best poem, novel, essay, short story, etc…, that we have inside of us.  We are imperfect beings and we are going to write some dreck here and there because we’re trying so hard to get to the finish line.  And that’s perfectly natural and it’s okay.  We just have a hard time stepping back from our passion piece and asking ourselves a hard question…what sucks?  And then being brutally honest with ourselves as we read.  We aren’t the first writers to do this.  Every single published author had to go thru this brutal dissection with every book they’ve written.  And when they thought they were done, the editor, agent or publisher pointed something else out that they thought needed to be changed or deleted.  Wherever we are, no matter how long it’s taken us to get there, is exactly where we are meant to be at that time.  Stop measuring yourself against these prolific authors that publish a new book every 6 months.  They have been writing, usually, for many years and have developed a formula for the type of books they write.  Mysteries, thrillers, romance novels, etc…, all have a formula.  We don’t want to acknowledge that because it doesn’t feel creative enough.  And many of them write series of books where their main characters and locales were introduced in the very first book so they don’t have to spend a good portion of the rest of the books introducing and fleshing out their characters and settings.  They can just jump into the book and go.  Just like 1 + 1 = 2, protagonist + antagonist = conflict.  Build the frame of your house and then add the drywall, paint, and carpet as you go.  If you’re a pantser like me, have an idea of where your characters and the book are going.  You don’t have to have an outline or a wall full of index cards with possible scenes written on them…just think about the finished book.  What do you want to happen?  What has to occur in the book to reach that conclusion?  General questions that you narrow down as you go.  We can do this but we have to stop comparing our writing to the writing of others…especially authors that have been at it for many more years than we have been.  It’s okay to say that you want to write like a certain author but don’t get so totally hung up on that ideal book that you freeze up because you figure out that you’ll never be that author.  Just write the book that’s inside you.  The world needs different voices, different ideas, different viewpoints, and your unique brand of creativity.  We are where we’re at for a reason. We might not understand what that reason is at the moment but just accept it for what it is while continuing to move in the direction of where we actually desire to be.  The only thing that you can do wrong is to get stuck where you are if it isn’t where you want to end up.  Just keep moving.                  

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” ~ Thomas Edison    

It wasn’t until recently that I figured out the main reason I stopped working on my novel, Rapture.  Actually, there were several things that led up to it such as not being able to find my tribe of supportive creatives which I do have now, a bad experience in a writing critique group that was caused by 1 person who took an instant dislike to me, a change in my sleep schedule after my neurologist figured what was causing my insomnia (I would write all night long, sleep an hour or 2, get ready and go to work, come home and start all over again), losing some of my focus because I was working so much, and a few other things.  But the biggest thing was that when all of these other things began happening, my flow just wasn’t flowing anymore so I forced my writing.  It just wasn’t coming from the same natural, organic place that it had been before and my writing suffered.  I tried to blame it all on the change in my sleep schedule and the addition of different sleep meds because I was writing great stuff when I couldn’t sleep.  I likened it to creatives that suffer from mental illness and they say that when they take their meds, they lose their creative abilities.  I suppose it’s a tiny bit like that because late night has always been my time and when that was taken away from me by the meds, it was a jolt to my creativity and I never learned how to channel it any differently.  Before the sleep meds, I wouldn’t really wake up mentally until after 8:00pm.  My neurologist says that on top of my 3 sleep disorders, I am also a night owl and there is no pill for that.  My mother was a night owl too.  She would stay up all night long reading and working puzzles, then fix breakfast for my dad, my brother, and me, take us to school then come home and sleep until shortly before we had to be picked up…she was late a lot.  Then she’d fix a nice dinner and, like me, her pattern would start all over again.  My dad was an early riser, as is my brother and they just jumped into their day.  I, on the other hand, had to be dragged out of bed each morning and then slog my way through the day.  I drove my mom crazy.  But, I think that for parents, the kid that makes you the craziest is the 1 that’s most like you.  It’s hard looking into that mirror.  I come by my sleep issues genetically.  But, as I said, after my natural sleep and writing rhythms were disrupted, I never really learned how to write at times that would be considered normal.  By not retraining my brain and just trying to force the creativity, I sent Rapture off the rails.  I wrote things that even at the time, I wasn’t happy with but I kept on writing.  I got lost and I’m just now beginning to find my way back.  I will have to work on it a lot more but it’s a beginning.  The hard part is going to be sitting down and dissecting Rapture and finding all of the viable pieces and cutting away all the dead weight that I’ve created.  I really believe that once I do that, it will get me back onto the rails so that I can finish Rapture and have it be the book that I first envisioned and not a literary Frankenstein’s creature that I’ve pieced together.  It’s going to be painful but beneficial.  I’ll keep you informed about how the dissection and then the rewrite are progressing.  If you have any tips or words of encouragement, I’d love to hear them!

“Writing is rewriting.  Even when you’ve gotten an agent and an editor, you’ll have to rewrite.  If you fall in love with the vision you want of your work and not your words, the rewriting will become easier.” ~ Nora DeLoach              

My life isn’t much different from anyone else’s.  I’m married to a photographer with his own business that he runs from our home, I work a full-time job that doesn’t feed my soul but is decent and pays the bills, we have 3 dogs and 5 cats, I have a little too much credit card debt that I’m paying down, not nearly enough in savings but working on it, I have some health issues but I’m better off than a lot of people, we have a house with an acre of land in the middle of a nice sized city, and so forth and so on.  Just a normal life with very little to complain about.  I am trying to stop working over-time so that I can have more writing time.  We’re always looking for more writing time, aren’t we?  There never seems to be enough no matter what, though.  I would love to be able to lock myself in my little writing haven that I’ve created and write for days.  But we know just how that would go, don’t we?  We’ll write a little then our mind will wander.  We will Google different things, check our email, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc….  We’ll go back to our writing…for a little bit…we’ll then wander off again.  It’s our process, I suppose.  We can’t just sit and write for hours usually.  I don’t know why that is though.  I’ve tried to decipher why it is that we can’t just do the 1 thing that we say we want to do more than anything else in the world.  Why can’t we stay on task?  Part of the reason that I can’t stay on task is that I have both ADHD and OCD, so I’m easily distracted and when I get distracted, I tend to stay there because of the OCD.  I’ll think of something that I haven’t thought of in a long time…for example, a book that I haven’t seen in months or even years.  And suddenly that book becomes the most important thing in the world and I have to find it.  Why?  For absolutely no reason other than, I have to find it.  I will search for hours until I do find it and then, I can go back to what I had been doing, the book found and then forgotten again.  Is it part of our process or is it avoidance?  Personally, I think it’s both.  We circle our writing like a hawk circling its prey.  After we’re sure that it’s the prey that we’re seeking, we dive down and attack then write like a mad person.  Until we’re hit by the next stray thought.  I’m not a linear thinker.  Maybe that’s why, as a writer, I’m a pantser.  I cannot do an outline or plot a scene to save my life.  I have tried so hard to do both and haven’t ever been successful.  Honestly, I’d rather be that hawk, circling my story and then diving down into it.  We all have our process and, if it works, keep using it.  If it doesn’t, keep experimenting until you find yours.  There’s no right or wrong…there’s only that which works for you.  Don’t let anyone tell you differently.  Just continue to cultivate your talent.  Emphasis on YOUR.  Don’t forget that we are individuals so we all work differently.  My process might work for you but it most likely won’t.  And vice versa.  Find your own path and stay on it as long as it leads somewhere even if it has a few detours here and there.  Just don’t stop.  That’s the 1 thing that’s guaranteed to not work.  So, chart your course and keep going…you’ll get there.  

“You have to write the book that wants to be written.  And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” ~ Madeleine L’Engle           

I have a dream writing space.  It’s a spacious white room with colorful paintings, prints, and decorations.  There are several floor to ceiling bookshelves filled with books from many different subjects but mostly about writing.  There are 2 large windows, 1 a bay window and the other has my desk sitting in front of it.  It looks out over an open field full of wildflowers.  My desk is white with nothing but my laptop, my planner, a notebook and pens on it.  Where do I currently write?  It’s my former fairly tiny crowded craft room.  It does have 2 large windows though with nice views…lots of trees but no wildflowers.  I had to pack up all of my craft materials to make room for my laptop, some books, and notebooks.  I do all of my writing in here but I also do my meetings online for my creativity group, writing incubator and Sunday Night Writing Group as well.  I’ve labeled this my New Orleans room.  I love New Orleans.  My husband and I loved it there so much that we married at the Hotel St. Louis in the French Quarter in December of 1996.  I have masks, pictures, signs, beads, and barware that remind me of NOLA.  It’s painted dove gray with bright red trim.  I wish I had a bigger area but I don’t want to get rid of all of my crafting supplies, tools, and equipment.  Maybe when, notice that I didn’t say if, my writing takes off and it becomes an even bigger part of my life, I’ll get rid of some, if not all of it.  We’ll see.  I’m a bit of a hoarder at heart, I guess.  I’m comfortable with all of my familiar things around me.  The nice thing about my little room is that it’s pretty isolated within the house.  There are 3 ways to get in here…through the master bathroom, which is mine, a door from the living room that is now blocked with my craft supplies and from the backyard.  I come in here and I’m away from the noise and chaos that sometimes comes with having 3 dogs and 5 cats.  My husband can make a noise and I might just barely hear it.  So it’s great in that way.  I’ve made it mine and I love it.  But I’m still going to aim for my dream writing room but if it never happens, I’m fine with that because we can write anywhere.  Some places are better than others but if we have a laptop or a pad of paper and pens, we can write.  Where do you write?  What does your dream writing area look like?  Don’t forget to make that dream room part of your dream writing future.  Flesh your dream out.  Make it as real as you can.  That’s how you make them real.       

Writing chose me as a child.  I don’t remember even thinking about it, I just started writing and have never stopped.  I kept diaries and journals all of my life…some were truthful depictions of my life while some were entries depicting the imaginary life that I had going on in my mind.  I had a very rich and detailed imagination.  I would write letters to imaginary people.  (I never said I was normal, did I?)  I’ve been writing poetry and short stories for as long as I can remember.  I never really shared my writing as a child or teenager.  I asked for and received a Smith Corona electric typewriter for Christmas in 1975 (I still have it) and took a creative writing class from a wonderful teacher in high school who was the 1st person that ever praised my writing up to that point.  We had to write 1 relatively long short story for a major part of our grade midsemester and for some weird reason, I wrote a Russian tragedy with homosexual lovers and all kinds of symbolism.  Honestly, I don’t even have 1 single clue where that all came from.  Oh, and I lived in a smaller town in the buckle of the Bible Belt and this was in probably 1976 when I was 16 years old so I hadn’t been exposed to a lot of Russian tragedies with homosexual lovers at the time.  It was an elaborate story that I was especially proud of but, because of the subject matter, I could have never shared it with my parents because I would have ended up being counseled by our preacher in no time flat!  But Mrs. Shiflett told me it was a wonderful story and went over the story scene by scene pointing out all the things that I had done perfectly.  She also commented on the mature themes in the story and asked how I had come up with it.  I didn’t really have an answer to that question.  1 day, it was in my imagination and the next it was being written.   I got an A+ and she told me to never stop writing.  But to this day, aside from the 2 of us, no one has ever seen that story and now, I don’t even know what happened to it or remember exactly what it was all about.  But I was proud that day and that was the beginning of my dream to be a writer…a published author.  And that dream has never left me.  I, on the other hand, have left it behind several times but have always come back to it.  I found a creative writing class at the junior college in our town in my mid-twenties during my 1st (extremely abusive) marriage and writing became my release.  The instructor was great and once again I found an audience but this time it wasn’t just the instructor…it was the class as well.  I did very well in the class and was once again told to never stop writing.  Then life got in the way after my divorce…working a full-time and 2 part-time jobs and reveling in my freedom took up all of my time.  I still wrote bits and pieces of poetry but nothing longer than that.  Fast forward a bit to Sam, my fiance, who’d been my high school and college sweetheart, dying in a plane crash.  Grief and devastation would not let me write for some time.  We’d decided in college that we wanted different things so we split but stayed the closest of friends.  He was even in my wedding when I married the antithesis of Sam.  After the separation from he who shall remain nameless, Sam and I began to spend more time together and it eventually led to him proposing in February 1986.  We didn’t tell anyone because the divorce wasn’t final and we were enjoying our little secret.  We decided to tell our families who had always wanted us together on Sunday, March 30th, which was Easter.  My birthday had been the 28th and we weren’t able to spend time together but we planned to on the following evening after he finished his last flight ever for a group of skydivers whose founder did not maintain his planes well and 1 of them, in particular, scared Sam so he avoided flying it.  He only flew for them to build up his flight hours so he could eventually fly larger planes.  They had finished for the day when 1 small group wanted to go up 1 more time.  Sam had already tied down the other plane and hadn’t fueled it and told them that.  They told him to take the other plane but he told them no.  They eventually wore him down…1 more jump and he was done for the day.  They took off and about 150′ off of the ground, the plane went left while he was still climbing.  He had no control of the plane…they later found that a cable had snapped…and the plane slammed into the ground and caught on fire.  2 skydivers survived and 2 died along with Sam, whose official cause of death was the fire.  It was 10:00pm and I was wondering where was but assumed that they might have taken him out for a goodbye round of drinks.  I wasn’t worried.  Then my phone rang and it was my mom.  She was crying and screaming for me to turn on the TV news.  She kept asking me what his middle name was and I said, Charles.  And she broke down and told me that she thought he was dead.  About that time, the story came on.  I collapsed onto the floor in hysterics.  Then I heard my doorbell and I somehow answered the door.  It was my brother’s wife and she was crying as well but tried to calm me down.  There was no calming to be had.  I was devastated beyond anything that I could imagine.  I was an emotional wreck for a year…crying, barely functioning, not eating, etc….  Then, one day, I rediscovered my Smith Corona and started writing poetry…all of my anguish, loss, devastation bled out onto that paper.  It was the release that I needed.  It helped me limp slowly back to the world and people around me.  I continued to write while swearing that I’d never love anyone like that again.  A little over 5 years later after a lot of non-serious dating, I met my current husband.  He has always been my biggest writing cheerleader even though he has no clue about the process, the pressure, the doubt, etc….  When I told him earlier this year that I’d joined SARK’s Succulent Wild World, a group for creatives, all he said was that even though he didn’t know what a SARK was, if it made me happy, go for it.  So I had to explain to him who, not what, SARK was.  When I joined a wonderfully talented group of ladies in The Sunday Night Writing Group, he continued to cheer me on.  Same thing when I was invited to join SARK’s Rhapsody of Writing ( a writing incubator) and I did join it.  He doesn’t begrudge me the time commitment it all takes because it makes me happy.  I love that man!  I want to be a writer because I’ve always wanted to be a writer…long before I even dreamed of being published.  Even with the blood, sweat, and tears that come with it, I still love it.  That feeling you get when you write the perfect sentence or find the perfect rhyme can’t even be fully expressed.  And all of the other amazing feelings that writing can evoke in us that make us forget about things like sitting and staring at a sentence for hours because it just doesn’t sound right.  Writing is in my blood, heart, soul, and mind.  I have no choice.  In a way, I suppose it’s my destiny.  So, why do you want to be a writer?  Is it your destiny?     

“Control your own destiny or someone else will.” ~ Jack Welch