Welcome to another month of the Insecure Writer’s Blog Hop. This month’s topic is how major life events affect your writing, and has writing ever helped you through something? Thanks to this month’s co-hosts: Delorah, Christopher, Tanya, and ChemistKent.
I like my life ‘uncluttered.’ Minor bumps in the road are acceptable, but I shut down emotionally when it comes to unplanned big events.I need time to process the impact on my life. So, when I put my life on ‘pause,’ I find myself unable to make progress in my writing.
This was true when I wrote poetry many years ago, and even though I’ve shifted to fiction, it’s still true. When I wrote poetry, it might be six months to a year before I could write a poem about something that happened to me. When one of my grandmother’s died, I think it was a year before I wrote her a poem in tribute. In the case of my father-in-law’s death, I think it took me two years.
I’ve always tried to keep my personal life apart from from my stories. Of course, my books lean towards action adventure, so that isn’t hard. And bits and pieces of my life have crept into my characters, but none of them are modeled after me. But they are there to keep me company when I’m stressed even if I can’t get words on paper.
But who knows? Maybe something I live today will find it’s way into one of my books three years down the road, when I’ve had time to process it and it fits into my ‘new’ normal, whatever that turns out to be.
