HerKind.com

Talking with a good friend tonight about the course of my life, its untraditional path, the lack of the kind of stable relationship that most women my age have, the no kids, he suggested to me that I just accept that I am this type of person and stop questioning it, or trying to fight to change my character. He said many writers and creative people are like this. I'm not so sure about that, I know lots of writers who are married with children, but I'll suspend my disbelief for the sake of not feeling so bereft of a "normal" life.

If that's the case, I said, then I better create a masterpiece to make it all worthwhile.

I wasn't even kidding. I've said similar things in relation to my career many times in the past.

It might be a self fulfilling prophecy, or the grand influence of a mother who didn't want me to live the kind of confined life she did, or maybe I just was never in the mood, or right circumstance to do anything other than what I've done.

Who know. I have to figure it out. No, don't figure it out, my friend said, just live it.

Good advice I guess.

In the interest of creating something worthy of my solitary life, I began a project that up until last night was only a rough outline, scratched together in the spring, waiting for inspiration.

Inspiration indeed came - and lest you think I reveal everything in my blog  and that there's nothing left to know about me - I'm actually keeping the trigger to myself. But for the last two nights I've been pounding out words on my keyboard. About 1500 of them, or 4 pretty good pages so far. I don't have a care or expectation of how long it will take me to finish the project or even get it right. Having the freedom, and by freedom I mean TIME and SPACE, to just write is pure joy.

It's fiction - though it may be thinly disguised non fiction, but  my writing has progressed enough that I finally understand that thing many writers have said to me over the years - you're not really writing until you're not afraid to bleed on the page.

I guess it's just the price I have to pay.