I am trying to find my way as a writer. I have written a 425 page memoir, that memoir turned into a 350 page novel, 75 pages each of three different romance novels, and am currently about one third of the way – 100 pages – through a young adult novel. I am published only in short memoir and fiction online and in hard copy in The Cup of Comfort Cookbook and three years of anthologies entitled Real Words for Real Women. I wrote 50 pieces that were published in Nerdnosh, an online ezine that published stories from anyone willing to send them in, and now I have started this blog, which means that my work is “published,” if not by someone else, than by me. What I realize is that knowing I have even one person who might read my stories, memoir pieces or personal essays moves me to get up and write every morning. In other words, I long for my work to be read.

This hasn’t always been the case. I have written journals for years and have a pile of them which chronicle my life from my coveted 7th grade diary up to the quick writes I continue to write with students.  These I am fine to simply let lay and never have anyone read. Then I have those three romance novel attempts that were critiqued in ongoing critique groups, but which I’m plenty happy for no other person to every lay eyes on again. Try as I might, I simply am not a romance novelist. I get offended at the genre when I’m writing. So much emphasis on sex when, even though I am all for sex, I happen to know there is so much more to life. Alas, no need to resurrect those babies. They can stay safely hidden in their boxes at the back of my closet.

As for my very long in coming memoir/novel, dear Lord. How I worked on that story, one that I felt so compelled to write, and yet, one which will most likely never see the light of day to anybody beyond the handful of critique group participants and friends who offered to read it. How can one spend almost ten years working on something and be okay with letting it gather dust in its box, along with those other novel attempts? I have considered self-publishing, but must say that, though I needed to write the memoir and needed to participate in John Rechy’s master class for four years to rewrite it into fiction, I have no real need for another human to read it.  Is this insanity or what?

My husband, God bless his soul, has watched this writing “process” for years now, has seen me get up early, stay up late, and be preoccupied, testy, frustrated and elated. He’s even sent me off for two weeks to a cheap motel in Ventura to finish the final draft of my novel, and visited just twice, once to see how I was doing and then on my birthday, which happened to fall within that two week period. He has watched me go off to writing conferences where I have pitched my novel to agents and then listened to my giddiness upon returning after someone expressed interest and wanted to see the completed manuscript. And he’s seen me drag myself around after getting the word, “Thanks, but no thanks,” after years of intense labor. He has held me through the angst and yelled at me when I got too absorbed. Mentioned bills that I needed to pay, meals we might eat if I’d get up and cook, places he’d like to go if he could wrest me away from my computer. Poor man. He has finally surrendered to the fact that I am a writer, whether my novels ever get published, and resigned himself to this schizophrenic life I lead between two worlds, the real one in which I am often only half attentive, and the imaginary one, where I reside with full comfort.

And then I started this blog. Lord have mercy, what fun this is! I get up and bang out my 20 minute minimum for the day or else wait and write when I know I’ll have a student who will be writing for at least 20 minutes during his/her hour with me. In that case, I actually am paid to write, not really, but sort of, and that also frees up my morning to actually plan my day. I am fast on my feet in short pieces. I can write one without a lot of thought or angst or even preoccupation and off I go to the rest of my day which is balanced between writing students and family for the most part. I pay bills, laugh, look up movies I might want to see, work with my husband and am not down that rabbit hole of my novel, wondering about my new characters and their motivation or past histories. It’s liberating and enjoyable.

And yet. I must say, nothing is quite as much fun as writing a novel. Even a bad novel, which apparently I’m fairly good at! The pull to create a whole world where people have complicated lives and problems that yank at them, and the pages to explore those problems and yearnings – ahhh – now that’s heaven. Profitable, well, no, at least not for me…yet…or possibly ever. But fun. Oh yes.

So, here I am dealing with this pull in one direction and the other, but both in a writing direction. I have long since given up the idea that I might be a teacher other than of writing or that doctor I thought I might want to be long ago, or even the psychotherapist, a profession in which I still hold a license. Well, I could be a psychotherapist again, mainly because that profession is all about stories – people’s stories – and that’s where I live. So, okay, I could consider doing that again, if need be. But the truth is that at this point I say what my husband has taught me to say  – rather than the awkward silence that used to be my reaction – when people ask me about my profession: “I am a writer and I teach writing privately to support my passion.”

Yes, that’s what I do and I’m happy with it. Blogs and flash fiction and memoir and a memoir turned novel and now this second novel, about which one agent said, “Write this one and after it’s sold, then we’ll see if we can’t sell that first one.” Oh, I just remembered she said that. Maybe there is hope for that manuscript, after all. Down the road, after my new heroine encounters obstacle after obstacle before reaching her goal, which will have changed since she’s been tried and tested and is now clearer about what really matters.

Hmmm. That sounds like me and my writing life. Ha!