Someone asked me once if I had a routine of writing, or if the words just came when they came. I’ve done both – and neither, over the years.
When I started writing my first novel, Another Glass of Tea, I had a full time job and it kept waking me up at 2 a.m. I tried to ignore it, but it kept happening. Eventually, I realized that when it happened, I had to get up and write. It could be 10 minutes, half an hour, or a marathon stretch that saw the circles under my eyes grow darker and the amount of coffee I was drinking grow larger.
Eventually, I took a sabbatical from that busy full-time job to get it across the finish line. That was a great period. I woke early, walked for 90 minutes or so and then sat down at the computer and wrote for four hours. Sometimes more, but never less. Admittedly, sometimes those four hours were spent writing other things, but it was spent writing. I felt like I’d accomplished something by the end of it. Even when I was overseas, I still sat to write, and the beginnings of Skipping Stones was borne from those writing sessions. I still have story fragments squirrelled away from that time that I hope turn into parts of future novels.
Real life beckoned, and I eventually had to go back to work. Then, my writing mostly took place in the evenings. I had no kids at home and few commitments, so most of my free time was spent in unstructured writing time. I worked, but not as well, I thought, as the more structured, dedicated “I must write now” time.
When Skipping Stones was published in 2024, my job had gotten even more intense and it ate up all of my energy. Writing was sidelined, but that was okay. I had a pretty good idea of when I wanted to retire, and fully expected that I’d write again, in much the same style as my sabbatical.
July 2025 rolled around. Retirement. I gave myself the grace of a few months. August was to do absolutely nothing. September was to find new routines. By October – at the very latest – I’d be back at it.
Yeah, right. Life has thrown a few curveballs into the past 9-or-so months. I planned a wedding (mine), had a honeymoon, sold my house, moved in with my now-husband, bought and renovated a vacation property, and dealt with a death in the family. Writing just hasn’t happened. That manuscript that had 9,000 words – that’s about 10 percent of a book – when I retired has not yet reached 15,000. With apologies to anyone who was hoping for my next novel soon, the long-hoped for spring release is off the table.
But with spring comes new hope, so I’m dusting myself off, picking myself off and starting all over again. I’m not going to beat myself up over it. Life had other plans for me this year and I’ll use all those experiences to feed into future plot lines. Who knows. Maybe there’ll be a later-in-life bride in a book to come!
