Hi Friends!
Well, I said I'd get back to you about why I grew a bit delinquent with my blogging. I do apologize once again for falling behind. I looked and found my last post to be Nov. 12. I don't know if the blog posting times show up here but I do a lot of late-night writing. Right around mid-November, my writing time switched from doing my blog to writing stories.
Let me explain. I love writing Christmas stories. For the last 10 years, I've been writing short stories at Christmas. I've entered several of them into contests and am happy to say that I've either won or placed in many of them through the years.
It was about 3 weeks or so following my baby's death when I decided to go attend a 'write-in' sponsored by a local writing group. It was an event to coincide with the National Novel Writing Month (where writers sign up to write a book in one month) and being new to my town, I hadn't yet found a writing group to join.
I went to this writing event without any ideas, with only a spiral notebook and a pen and with no motivation whatsoever. I wasn't even in the mood to go and had tons of work to do at home since it was right before Thanksgiving.
I met a few people, took down group meeting dates and sat down in a silent room that only occasionally was filled with keys clicking as everyone was frantically working on their novels. I stared at my notebook. I knew that I had to start somewhere so just started writing garbage. Literally. I described myself putting up Christmas decorations. Every tedious detail was written down and as my hand started to ache, I wondered where this stupid story was going. I looked at the clock and felt like a student waiting for a dreaded class to end.
After some pizza and a dew it finally seemed like my story had a flow and a direction. And then, it hit. One line and then another. I felt tears coming as a smile pushed through on my face. I looked around the room wanting to share my joy with someone. I think every writer has some feeling when they know they've got "it" for a story or article. Things just seem to 'click' and you know that you reached the point that you didn't even now you were looking for.
I remember coming home that night feeling so happy and so uplifted. I was so energized! I felt 'high' on writing! I'm serious!! I was giddy almost. I quickly revised the story (on the computer) and sent it out to a Christmas contest. Well, I must have been 'on fire' because from about Nov. 20 - Dec. 10 I entered 7 different Christmas story contests. I also landed a last-minute freelance job to write a story for another contest. That's a lot of writing for someone squeezing it in usually in the midnight hour or later!
It was late, late, LATE one night when I was finishing writing/revising one of my stories. I remember checking my email before I went to bed and said out loud to myself, "You are stupid. You should be in bed, not writing your stories. You have so many other things to be doing and yet here you are wasting time writing." I was just chatting away with myself. Who knows, maybe the dog was listening--but then probably not since everyone in the house was asleep except for me! I felt guilty about not writing my blog. I had so wanted to write my blog as I had feelings piling up but with a limited amount of 'free time' to write, I felt myself called during this Christmas season to write stories.
Well, I pulled up an email during my self-chat and was dumbfounded to see the opening line. It read, "Kim, Keep writing your stories."
I stopped. I stared at the screen. Huh??? How was it that within milliseconds of me asking those questions aloud I received an answer??? I wondered who sent the email. The email came from a writing organization and was some sort of newsletter/update mail. Obviously they plopped their subscriber names into the opening lines. I don't think I've heard from these people in months and yet here was an email that rolled in at precisely the right time.
So here it was at sometime in the middle of the night when I was disgusted with myself for 'fooling around' with my Christmas stories that I asked hard questions of myself and then found an answer. You can interpret this however you choose, but for me I feel that it was just too coincidental. The timing was as if I was having a live conversation with someone and that someone was God. I feel that God was nudging me. I feel it was Him who said, "Keep writing Kim. You have something to say and you need to say it. Don't waste this opportunity."
Well, that's all the motivation I needed. :)
I'll update more about some of these stories and how my contest entries turned out in the next post. For now, know that while I'm disappointed that my writing time was detoured from my blog, I believe it went to a good cause and for a good reason. Maybe I'll never know exactly why I'm called to write these things right now, but I believe I am. It's helping me and I do so hope that it's helping someone else out there.
Thanks my friends. I hope you keep your ears and eyes open for those nudges you might need! And if you ever find yourself chatting with an email thinking you're crazy, you never know. It just might talk back.
Kim
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