I'm a .........Writer?

Well folks, today is the day that I "come out" of the literary closet and own my late-night passion publicly. For the last few months I have been spending my child-free hours writing a novel as part of a writing group. I had started writing a little on my own, and before I knew it I had joined a writing group with three amazing ladies and a fantastic teacher (one of his students is the international best-selling author of Hush,Hush). I had also not intended on attempting a novel, but Caleb (our instructor) wouldn't let me hang back.

I started writing because once upon a time I was good at it, and found that regardless of current talent, I LOVE WRITING! I find myself daydreaming about my characters all the time, and I'm sure that the people I live with are sick of hearing about them. I'll crawl into bed at night and say to Troy, "You will never guess what just happened to my heroin! She is so amazing!" to which Troy responds with the courteous "Oh, yeah?" that I give him when he starts his gun-speak. I have been really embarrassed to tell anyone, because I was afraid of what people would say or think, and that it would be embarrassing if I never got published but still called myself a "writer."


This weekend I went to a writer's conference in American Fork, and got totally called out on my unwillingness to claim my passion for writing by another student of my teacher who has now published multiple books. She said. "Sometimes admiting you're a writer feels like telling people you think you're a princess. Who cares?! Tell people anyway. If you don't treat yourself like a writer, you'll never be one, and you'll NEVER get published. " So, here I am, telling all the people in my known world that I love to write, and whether or not I am ever published, I LOVE writing this book, and blog posts may be fewer and further between until I'm finished with it. Whew. That feels better.
This is a pic of me, Vicki from my group, and our teacher Caleb Warnock at the conference.