PUTTING OURSELVES LAST

We women are the nurturers of everyone and everything. We take care of our husbands/boyfriends, do everything for our kids, nurse our elderly parents and offer a shoulder for our friends to cry on. We even wind up taking care of the animals our children bring home. Or, in my case, the Beta fish my husband fell in love with. I am the one who feeds Blue Boy, cleans out his bowl and talks to him. There's been one good thing come out of this--he comes to the surface when I talk to him and blows me bubbles while unfurling his big red fin and wiggling the tiny ones near his head quite fast in excitement. He ignores my husband.

Often, we are not only too busy taking care of others to find time to write, but we put our happiness and pleasures last. What we want matters, too! Start today and treat yourself to some happiness of your own. Find the time to write or read or just vegitate if that is what you need to do to feel better about yourself. Do something that makes you smile. Take out the old dreams you've packed away and follow through on them.

You are worth being first in your own life.

"One Who Loves"

"One Who Loves" is the meaning for amateur in French. I can relate to that definition as I am sure you who have chosen this craft can. I love to write but I also feel like an amateur when I sit down to write something new. Many great writers have said that each book is a new beginning, that they too start over as a "new" or amateur writer when crafting in a new direction. So you and I are not alone in this feeling.

I have managed to write at all stages of my life--when depressed, when joyful, when saddened, when exuberant. I feel that I have wasted time, lost out, ignored a part of my life if I don't write something each day. Maybe I will never use what I write in a journal, or throw out pages of what I write some days. But the fact that I have made an effort tells me I am a writer.

Writing can feel like stepping off into thin air without a parachute or a net beneath us. It is especially true for those of us who don't use an outline, who write by the seat of our pants. I start off each new project by walking off an unknown cliff. The journey is sometimes fearful. The road curves into unknown places and I am alone most of the time. I must only try to go wherever my writing leads, to listen to the characters if I know them well enough to hear them or, if writing nonfiction, attempt to be as honest with myself and my readers as I can.

"Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads." (Erica Jong)