Three years ago . . .

My site is called Write Where I Want to be for a reason. As a writer I can take day trips to foreign lands, visit exotic locals and never leave my seat. Okay so I would love to actually go to some of the places I write about, but I guess I have to live vicariously through my character and she in turns gets to live because of my imagination.

It's a win win situation

Today I planned to take a time jump (because I'm working on a sci-fi novel) to the past, three years to the past.

I figure since I know the time and the place, having lived through it three years prior, I shouldn't have to do much research.

HA.

I have come to the realization that I my memory is weak. I can't barely recountn yesterday, let alone three years ago.

Oh sure I remember I was three years younger, I only had two grand children, I 'd only been married 26 years and so on.

The little details of everyday life escape me. What did I do in 2006 that set that year apart from the others. Was it merely filled with the same banal moments that write my moments today?

This is why people journal. So they can travel back via their words and remember. I journal off and on, then go back and read myself and wonder what was I thinking. Then try to be a good girl and not edit my writing, because I'm not her anymore.

Oh pieces of the me from three years before remain, and I still look the same, except hopefully, living through those three years has left me a bit older and perhaps wiser. Or was that wider???

So here I am in 2009, trying to remember me in 2006. Was that a good year?

I lived through it, but there were no major defining moments, no gotcha memories that clairified my existence from that year to the next.

And maybe, just maybe that's a good thing, 2006 is gone, 2009 is almost over and the future is waiting beyond, I'll just have to take a step toward it and know that even if I forget most of the moments that made my years, I still had the blessing of walking through them. And maybe, I'll stop and savor the moments I have now before they are lost in the volumes that are my past.

What makes a writer write? What causes a wordsmith to toil long hours over a story? Then spend longer hours editing and whittling away the very words they labored over so they can fit a word count or Publishing house. What cause them to cramp their fingers and sometimes their style.

I ask the questions, but the answers are oft times illusive. I do know that to me . . . writing is akin to breathing, if I couldn't put my imagination on paper, if I couldn't use the gift I believe God gave me, something within me would die.

So to you all you writers out there, let me encourage you to flex your imagination, breath in and out, write and edit and pray and dream.

The words you write may touch millions or maybe just you. But don't give up.

Because, (here is my good news for the year . . . considering how often I blog) if anyone is out there listening, after many long years, (twenty plus) and a few rejection letters, two of my books have been accepted by Desert Breeze Publishing.

Miracles can and do happen. Dreams do come true.