It's Time

We all have to start...somewhere?

Once upon a time, I wrote books. Not just a few, either - I penned twenty-three full-length novels, a handful of novellas, and various assorted short stories. Most of those books fell into the genres of Romantic Suspense or Women’s Fiction/Romance. The novellas were mostly parodies, a few were light erotica, and a couple were fairly straightforward fiction with a sci-fi/fantasy bent. 

But it has been three or four years - so long that I don’t remember exactly how long it has been - since I put serious pen to paper and wrote anything of substance. The last book I authored was Pinecone Trail, the 15th novel in my Firefly Hollow series. As much as it pains me to admit, I don’t think it will surprise anyone to learn that Pinecone Trail was probably my final book in that series. 

Perhaps unforgivably, I’ve also been quiet - too quiet. I’ve not reached out to readers who followed me for years, to update them on the goings-on in my mind. There was nothing, quite frankly, to update them with. Who wants to hear “I’m still alive, but I’m still not writing and don’t see it happening anytime this decade” for crying out loud???

Hyperbole? Maybe. I do hope to write something more than blog posts by the end of the year - 2021, that is. I’ve just fallen so far away from writing, I’m afraid to promise any single thing. 

I don’t even know that I can consistently blog at this point. I want to, but…

So why did I stop? Why am I still struggling? 

The latter is a question I ask myself daily. Do I still want to write? Yes. Am I still capable of writing? Yes…kind of? Nonfiction, like blog posts, probably. Fiction? The kind that takes real, in-depth emotions and work and getting to know characters better than you know anyone on the planet, then tying them all together into a feasible plot line within a story structure and making it all interesting? I honestly don’t know. I hope so. 

Answering the question of why I stopped is easier. First, I was burned out. No vacations, no recharges, no breaks, and twenty-three novels in the span of less than ten years. Then, throw in emotional turmoil related to losing loved ones, losing my father-in-law, seeing the basic structure of my immediate family break down. Add a dash or two of health-related issues, such as dealing with chronic Lyme disease, Sjojgren’s Syndrome, being dropped into surgically induced menopause. And just for good measure, top it off with two-plus years of uncontrolled high blood pressure that only resolved after the ovary surgery… I was flat wrung-out, physically and emotionally. The well was dry. There was nothing to give, no words to be had. And that’s where I stayed until late 2020 or so. My emotions were largely flat, though I still enjoyed life. I didn’t lose my temper or wail with despair. I was just happy and superficial. Shallow as a mud puddle, but nice. Benign. Cheerful, even. At least there was that.

Everything that I went through conspired into the perfect storm to knock me completely off my game. I didn’t just change on a mental and emotional level, but on a physical level. My brain rewired itself as part of its healing and recovery, and I mean that in a very literal way. For close to two years, let’s say 2018-2019, I lost a good portion of my vocabulary skills. Words simply didn’t work for me anymore the way they had in the past. 

Oh, I was still able to communicate and verbalize, but the ability to pull complex words out of the air with a flair and use them - the “buck 2.98” words, as the guys in high school would have said - was gone. I struggled to string coherent sentences together, to pull the words I wanted from my mental dictionary. And my memory and concentration… a rusty sieve has more holding capability than my mind during that period of time.

There aren’t many people in my personal life who are aware of how hard I struggled to continue to sound like myself during those two years. I’m an introvert with reclusive tendencies, and most of my communication is done electronically. Fortunately, that’s a format that allows for taking time to formulate responses. My husband knew, and I think a couple of close friends were on to the notion that something had changed, but I certainly didn’t talk about it freely and publicly. 

Did I see doctors? Yes. They shrugged and said what I was experiencing didn’t make sense. The tests they offered me were normal, and I didn’t fit the checkboxes to qualify for other tests. Eventually, I gave up trying to get answers. If it had been fatal, it would have killed me by that point, I reasoned. In fact, I don’t think I’ve even discussed the issue with my current doctor… I started seeing him a few months after the surgery, when my psyche had started to piece its self  back together, and I simply didn’t want to deal with another round of feeling like a specimen and going the specialist route.

If nothing else, I thought ignoring the writing might bring it back to the forefront. Let the injury rest in order to heal, right? To some extent, that’s worked. I still have ideas, and I still jot them down. I outline them, sometimes in great detail. I’ve considered partnering with someone who can write the fine details, much like a rough carpenter works with a finish carpenter to build a house. But I’m not a great team player. That introverted thing, it’s a real hurdle sometimes. And selfishly, those are my ideas and my books, and I don’t want to share the production of them. 

Where am I now? 

In early 2019, I put aside the active pursuit of trying to write, instead focusing on working with my husband in the small business we own. I am proud to say that I can now format books and design covers. In fact, I recently redesigned my own book covers, doing it entirely myself for the first time, start to finish. And that has been largely my focus for the last two years. 

Lately, my characters have been talking to me, though only in fits and spurts. I can feel these people in my head, and I can see them going about their daily lives, but the picture is still out of focus. That said, this is significantly more detail than I’ve been allowed access to in ages, and I think I might possibly, maybe, optimistically be undergoing a breakthrough in the works. It feels very much like I’m a scrawny, pitiful bird that’s cracking out of its shell, blindly searching for life outside the hard cocoon that has held it safe. I am thisclose and I can almost smell the creativity beginning to grow.

We’ll see. I’m impatient - the ability to wait and see has never been one of my virtues, no matter how hard my Lyme/AI complex has tried to teach me. Maybe I’ll write something fictional and fabulous this year, maybe next… and maybe not at all. But it’s time to try, and I’m willing to try, and sometimes, a wing and a prayer and a leap of faith is what it takes. It’s time. I’m trying. And this is where I’ll start.