I’ll admit that it took me few months getting comfortable with the notion of starting a blog. People have plenty of stuff to read already, I thought.
Hurling myself into cyberspace, how important was it to carefully edit my blog posts, to get them exactly right? My friend Julie, a social media aficionado, encouraged me to just “do it.”
Brook used to tell me to stop with all the writing-group exercises, although my 15+-year Maine writing group was more about camaraderie with close women pals. “Just write, you know how to do it, mom,” she’d say, adding — to my heart’s delight — “you’re a a zingy writer” or something like that.
At the time I probably still owned Oz Books and was creating store newsletters, reviewing children’s books for professional magazines, writing a monthly “Branching Out” column for AppleSeeds children’s magazine. So I had to be zingy.
Writers write. Indeed. Now that I make my living (such as it is) writing three or four articles in every issue of the biweekly Arizona Jewish Post, I am a writer.
I dream of writing a memoir. Whenever I see her, my author niece Amy says I should write my memoir because she wants to read it. (My kids know enough about me already, maybe too much).
Friends often ask me why I don’t write a children’s book. I’ve got one going. It’s Tucson-based, about local history that I want to learn, along with some social activist commentary that needs to be subtle. Focus on making it a lively story, my inner Sheila advises.
Once I flung myself into the blogging world, writing my own stuff has taken hold. It’s so fun!
If writers write I’m traveling down the right yellow brick road. And what must be said at this point: thank you, dear readers, for skipping along with me.
Tucson Writer Editor 