My Inspiration

Friday of last week I finally finished my story! Eeeppp!!! I wrote nonstop for five days, 20,000 words in total. It was amazing.

I got a confident boost like you wouldn't believe. Its amazing what simply finishing something like that can do for you. It has been my dream since I was a child.

I'm not too concerned with publishing right now, as I stated before, I just want to make my story the best that it can be. Although I have finished the first draft, I still feel as though its full potential hasn't been explored and I'm excited to get in there and get my hands dirty!


I've already started plotting out my next WIP and I am SUPER excited about it! Its going to be nothing like I have ever written before. My main character just keeps surprising me in the most unexpected ways. She's got quite a few skeletons in her closet. I think its going to be a fun challenge to write!

I have to tell you guys this though, the writing community has been so encouraging to me. I owe so many thanks to so many people. People who don't even necessarily know that they encouraged me, yet they did. People who have taken the time to talk to me. To pull me along. The writing community is truly amazing.

When my husband and I found out that we were going to have a baby we discussed the fact it would be nice for me to stay at home with her. We didn't need my income and neither of us liked the idea of someone else raising our baby when I had the opportunity to stay at home with her. I was kind of iffy on the idea. Not that I had this amazing job, I worked at an Assisted Living Home and did hair on the side, but I loved it. So much. I didn't know what I would think about just being around the house all day.

My husband is the best kind of supportive. We truly are a team and I am so in love with that boy! Knowing how important writing is to me, he encouraged me to look at writing as my day job while I was home. He told me that this is my chance to really make a go of it! See, he really is great!

After she was born I went into a hermit phase. I couldn't concentrate on anything. I cried and lashed out. I had this colicky baby that I didn't know how to handle. I was exhausted and making everyone around me miserable. It was a rough first month.

Realizing that I am the most me when I am writing, my husband encouraged me to start back up. He started taking random feedings so that I could write. He came home from work and would ask my word count for the day. I was allowed to throw myself into my work and it helped me to feel alive again.

Once I got braver and he got more confident with her he would take her for most of the mornings on Saturday and I could go sit at the coffee shop.

I'm not even sure what made me sign up for a Twitter account, it just kind of happened one day. I started talking to like minded people, writers, mothers, both, and I was shocked at the amount of encouragement I got. These strong women living their dream because they were afforded the opportunity to stay at home with their babies. Or better yet, the women who still held a day job, took care of their children and wrote in the wee hours of the morning. All in the name of writing. Because it was important to them. Because they had something to say and it nagged at them until they were able to get it out. That is dedication.

Suddenly I realized that this isn't an impossible dream for me to have. I'm not being unrealistic or selfish for writing. For me, writing is like breathing, its something that I don't know how to live without doing. Because of meeting these encouraging women, and because of my supportive husband I was able to finish my first novel. I have been able to make writing a real priority in my life and it has been, by far, the best thing that I have done for myself.

Writing can be a very solitary profession to be in, part of which appeals to me. When you surround yourself with positive people though, you start to gain a little hope. These women have given me the hope that I needed! In the long run dirty dishes never hurt anyone, the laundry doesn't have to be done every other day. My husband doesn't require dinner to be done and on the table the second he gets home -or at all since I am a terrible cook- and its okay for me to carve out some time to work on my story everyday. It doesn't make me a bad mom to retreat to my office and it doesn't make me a bad wife to leave the baby with my husband for a couple of hours once he gets home from work. In fact, it makes me a better wife and mother because then I am able to give them my full, un-frustrated attention when I am with them.

Inspiration comes from all around, but for me inspiration comes from those who have made writing a priority. Women who have families and day jobs and hectic lives. Real women. If they can do it so can I because it is important to us and we are better people when we are writing.