Why I Write...

Some people wake up one day with an idea and decide to write a book. They publish, sell thousands of copies, and then they’re done. They never feel compelled to write again.

Some days I wish I could stop writing. Stroll through a museum or a park without etching every detail into my mind for reference. Enjoy a dinner out without eavesdropping on conversations for dialogue clips. Or savor a sunset or a river cruise without wondering how I’ll describe my experience later in paragraph form.

It’s annoying. Obsessive. But I can’t stop. Writing is integral to who I am.

I started writing when I was seven. I journaled about pizza nights and visiting Grandpa and Grandma and what my best friends said at school. When I was nine, I wrote my autobiography. It was short but typed with splotches of Wite-Out smeared across each line.

When I was eleven, I started a novel—a mystery about an old house and some detective kids. About fifty handwritten pages into it, I quit because I didn’t have a clue where it was going. But I fell in love with the creative process. I wanted to write fiction.

In sixth grade, I wrote a weekly newsletter for my class. By high school, I was writing for the school newspaper and yearbook. And when I graduated, I wrote articles for my hometown newspaper to help pay for college—a journalism degree, of course.

You get the idea…

When I started writing fiction, I began writing in small chunks. Ten minutes before breakfast. An hour when my girls napped. For as long as I could stay awake at night (which wasn’t very long). Then I thought about my next idea as I ate lunch, pushed the stroller, and shopped at the grocery store.

My issue is not about finding time to write. It’s about finding time to live around my writing.

God gave me this passion…desire…dream. If I never publish again, I’ll keep writing the journal entries and stories and articles like I did as a kid. I can’t help myself.