Here We Are

Welcome to my newest venture -- a blog to share my thoughts on reading and writing, a place to discuss children's literature and a chronicle of my road to children's book author. (You see how I did that? I'm pretending that the endgame is in the bag -- that I will, indeed, one day be published. I figure confidence is key in this business. It will keep me going in the darker days.)

What I've got are characters. And stories. They follow me around, they peek out from grocery store aisles, they nest in my head at night. They beg for release on the page. Sometimes, I end up with something I am really proud of. Other times, I know it's a load of crap. Regardless, I keep going.

To keep going at this stage of my life means so many things. I am a freelance magazine editor for Disclosures, the bimonthly member publication of the Virginia Society of CPAs. Writing and editing articles on taxation, accounting and auditing is a far cry from writing children's stories, but it has some similarities. Good writing, no matter what the genre or medium, is good writing. The same rules of grammar and communication apply.

Couple juggling that gig with the facts of daily life and, well, sometimes creative writing is a crapshoot. I will get on a roll, write a book in my head at the grocery store and race home to pound out a draft in 20 minutes, ice cream melting in the trunk. Or I will spend hours laboring over one page of my middle-grade book manuscript. I have peace for exactly five hours each week (that's when all of my three children are out of the house and at school and/or preschool), so I sometimes find solace then. Other times, I will write with all three of them crowded in my office, playing legos and hide-and-seek, with my two-year-old climbing up my chair and peeing down my back. Yes, that actually happened.

Somewhere in this zoo I am looking for magic. So here's my blog and my journey.