Writing is A Magic Muscle

How I'm Getting My Creative JuJu Back

The last save date on the unfinished draft of my next novella is February 2024. That means it's been a whole year since I've opened it, nevermind written a single sentence for it.

I've been working on this book since 2021--earlier, if I want to count when the idea of returning back to Annie's world and the summer of 1979 first came to be. Reading back through the first several chapters, I'm both awed and saddened.

Awed because it's damn good, and I'll forever live in gratitude and wonder of this gift of painting pictures with words.

Saddened because I know that over the last few years, I've lost some of that creative spark, stalling these stories midway.

Creativity is a muscle that has to be used or, like any muscle, it deteriorates. Oh, I've used my creativity and writing skills in other ways--namely for my spiritual business with its posts and essays. And I did write and publish two non-fiction books with my first poetry compilation on the way...

But storytelling is different. And I can't fully explain it. It's a different energy, taps into a different part of the psyche and soul. When I'm writing anything, it rises up from deep inside of me and spills out onto the page. And when I'm writing fiction, I'm merging the imagination--all those scenes playing out in my mind--with emotion.

That's what it's like for me, at least.

Even though I've taken a huge step this year by unraveling the knots of these interconnected stories and began drafting Lilac in Winter's sequel, when I focused on this book-- a novella that comes before the sequel that still needs to be finished--I couldn't tap in.

It felt like a lot of the magic was gone.

But tonight...

Tonight I sat down and opened the file, read through the first 10,000 words, and mapped out the remaining chapters.

Tonight, I recaptured some of the spark.

Because tonight I vowed I'm not giving up on something I love so much.

I wrote my first book, Gold in the Days of Summer, about a precocious 12-year-old girl named Annie who befriends her neighbor, a young Vietnam veteran at war with his own past. That same veteran then showed up in The Last Letter as Lia's psychologist. He has ties to the families in Lilac in Winter and East of Everywhere.

He is a common thread in all of my books, and in Ashes in Autumn, he'll finally be named.

I thought I was writing Annie's story, and Lia's story, and Lilac's story, and Janie's story.

But it's been his story all along.

And it's time for it to be told.

So this is where I am, and this is where I'll be--revisiting the house with the crab apple tree in the front yard and a porch overhang that shields him from memories he'd rather forget, going back even further to first love, forged friendships, and unfinished chapters that linger and haunt.

Writing one sentence at a time.

(Ashes in Autumn will be availalbe Fall 2025! Cover reveal this summer!)