Reflection

As I write this, it’s very dark and cloudy outside my office window with a little bit of rain, lots of wind. I hope those of you living in the middle of nasty storms on the West coast or too much snow elsewhere are staying safe.  This is always the time of year when we tend to reflect back on the year.  First, I always wonder how in the world it went by so fast. Isn’t it funny how, when we are kids, we can’t wait to grow up and be out there on our own, and as we grow older, we want so desperately for time to slow down.

If you have been a regular reader of my blog, then you know my second novel is about the life of my mother’s parents, and a little of their parents thrown into the mix as well.  Writing the first novel about my mom was very enlightening for me, for lack of a better word. Obviously I knew about my mom’s life and all the things she went through, both good and bad. Actually putting it all together and down on paper made it more real for me, especially writing about her life before I came along. It really felt like I got to know my mom and dad even better than I had before.  Now it’s happening again with writing this next novel about my grandparents and great-grandparents.  Talking with relatives and reading about them from ancestry.com has opened up doors into their personalities I never thought I would discover. I’m sure not everything I’m writing is right on the mark.  That would be impossible, since I didn’t know my great-grandparents and don’t  know all the details of my grandparents lives before I was born. Still, I have gained some insight into what made them, well them!  That has allowed me to even know myself better. It’s a little hard to explain, but if you do any research on your families, even if you don’t write about them as I did, I think you’ll gain a better understanding of what I’m talking about.  It’s been a fascinating and wonderful journey.  I can’t wait to get this second novel done.  I know how it ends, but getting there has been so much fun! 

Getting back to reflection, though. It can be so easy to fall into focusing only on the negative things that might have happened over this past year.  I didn’t sell as many books as I had hoped.  Yet still, I sold books, and not just to family and friends.  My husband and I lost a good friend this year. But we got to spend time with him just a few short weeks before he died. We had not seen him for many, many years, so that was very much a God thing. I officially left my former profession of medical transcriptionist and instructor.  That has been so difficult to do, but doing so has allowed me to write a novel and work on a second one and being able to call myself an author, which I will admit is still a bit foreign to me, but I’m getting to a point of actually believing it!  It’s not always easy, in fact most of the time, probably not easy, but with every negative or difficult thing that happens to me, I try to find something positive about it, no matter how quiet that positive ring might be. It’s very hard for me to do that.  My husband is the eternal optimist, at least 99% of the time, so I try to take my cue from him. I’m blessed to have learned that from him, even though I do have to work at it every day.

My wish for you is that, if you had a difficult year, you can find that positive ring for yourself, even if it’s almost silent. Maybe write down those events and the good and the bad of it all. You don’t have to be a published writer to be a writer. No one but you has to see it if that’s what you prefer.  It can be very surprising what you find in your own words that otherwise you might not know is there!  You know the drill—thanks so much for reading, and as always, enjoy your day, enjoy your Christmas season!!