Why We Write

Well, the school year is winding down and I am busy setting up visits for the Fall to L.A. area high schools to talk about Keep Sweet and writing and reading and all that great education stuff. Publishing a book is such a huge amount of work, the actual writing of it and then the marketing and promotion....an endless push that could easily be an eight hour work day, seven days a week. So many books out there, so many titles, so many authors....and so much new media that entices us away from the solitary, slowness of reading. I am finishing Crazy Busy, a great book for these technological times, the 24/7 information age. I feel like my brain is on high speed overload every day, all day and I am not alone, I know. Finding the time and space to actually write is so hard. It requires shifting gears, shifting your mind into a whole other zone and creating the space to make up stories, people, happenings, events, conflicts.  And the maintenance of life intrudes so completely on that process that I often find myself in these post Keep Sweet release days, just zoned out at the end of a day of contacting bloggers and teachers and bookstores and all the rest. Yet, if I don't write, I mean really write as in storytelling, I feel my anxiety rise and I can't take the edge off my nerves. I was at a book festival once and on a panel of writers. One of the audience members asked each of us why we wrote and most said for a paycheck, to meet a deadline, some made very funny quips. I answered honestly that I wrote to calm my anxiety and keep my equilibrium, to feel confident and empowered in an overwhelming world. I'd love to hear from other writers what their reasons are.....for sitting in front of a blank page or screen every day? let me know!

End of school year lament!

End of school year lament!