Brief Author Bio:

Who am I?

a reader, daughter, sister, writer, wife, sister-in-law, mother, rabble rouser, writer

i've been a writer all my life, but sometimes all the writing hasn't had the opportunity to get outside my head. i've enjoyed a prolonged childrearing hiatus, and since my child (who is of course the most amazing kid in the world) has been in high school, I've been dusting off my skills and thinking.

i'm the kind of person who can't talk about what i write until its written down, because i get only one chance to get it out before its gone. If I tell you, i won't write it down. So although I may participate in the discussion forums, I know myself well enough that i would necessarily limit anything I say to the process rather than the substance.

my first attempt at writing a novel in grade nine convinced me that i wasn't a writer. after mourning the loss of something so right, i went to college for media arts (since i love movies and tv almost as much as i love books) and as it turned out i became a writer anyway. maturity and experience taught me that the problems with my first novel were a combination of writing derivatively and not realizing that an outline is a necessary foundation. Even if you rip most of it up due to circumstance later, it is as essential to writing fiction as language.

the other thing it taught me was that i was a darned good editor. but i must never never never even think about a rewrite until i am done. once the first draft is completed, THEN i can edit the darned thing into shape. if I start editing before the draft is done, i'll edit forever and never finish.

i've noticed that NaNoWriMo has a push on to encourage young writers to write, and that's fine, but don't forget that it's us older writers who have had our writing life shanghaied by our daily lives who are the ones who need the push. We have a lot harder time coralling the requisite bits of energy to get it done. I am past the time when i had the energy and the will to save the world; at this point i'll settle for the energy to get it done, one novel at a time.

i will of course have to blog about this as well, so my readers are aware why my output is about to drop dramatically. Of course my blogs are a large part of why i feel confident about doing this at this point in my life.