The Warm Up Act

Why, you might be asking yourself, would anyone start a blog in this day and age when there are more than you can count already available on the internet for your reading pleasure (or annoyance, whatever the case). For me, the main reason is, I am a writer who has not been writing. I have a novel or two, like any writer does, in unfinished and unedited states. If you’re reading this you probably also have blog and know exactly what I am talking about. It eats away at you, that unfinished work, that unrealized dream. No matter what else goes fabulous in your life there is still that ONE THING you want to accomplish.
My downward spiral started with the unexpected death of my writing mentor. Her name was Lisa and she died suddenly from a blood clot in her lung, just hours after she sent me some information on a really cool writing workshop she thought I might also want to attend. Although I was a writer long before I met her, I never wrote as much or as hard as I did when I had her always asking me if I was writing. I would never have attended any writing workshops, let along drive five hours for one, which I now do almost every year. She brought me a book once, signed by one of my favorite authors, Anita Shreve. The inscription read, “Nichole, writing is a verb. -Anita”. Lisa signed me up to receive Writer’s Digest and when I left the department,t where I was actually her boss, she gave me a book titled, “The Writer’s Portable Mentor” to take with me because, she said, “I’m not going to be around to harass you in your new role.”
The first year after she died I drove to Madison, WI for “Weekend With Your Novel”, which is an extraordinary weekend of writing, critiquing and learning. After attending classes all day Saturday, I went back to my room and sobbed my eyes out for the rest of the day. I didn’t go last year, because (I told myself) I was getting ready for a wedding, and did not have time. Maybe it was a little bit of everything.
Following that big loss, my laptop became no longer usable for writing, and I had a wedding to plan and a lot of expenses and so it went on the back burner where it simmered and boiled. And boiled.
I got married, and not long after I bought a lap top. I spent a rainy day on my vacation reading my whole entire novel from start to finish, to reacquaint myself with my long lost love. It’s a love affair with your novel, you know, whether you admit it or not.
What I realized, as I sat reading my words, was that you might as well call me tin man because I am RUSTY. Writing takes practice. You have to find your groove, get in the zone (crawl down into the well) and when you haven’t been writing for two years…you have lost your way.
So this blog is practice. The warm up act. Prelude to a novel. Mostly it’s going to be about me, myself and I and mostly its going to be for the pure joy of familiarizing myself with the writer inside. And appreciating the readers I used to know.
Thanks for joining me.
Nic