Finding…
My voice. My community. My future.
If you read my previous post or maybe my newsletter, you know that I’m diving deep back into this writing journey. I am no longer living a life on the road, instead I find myself settled, for the time being anyway, in a corner of the country I never expected to be in. While I don’t foresee myself staying here long, it is where I need to be at this moment.
One of the drawbacks however, has been the lack of community. It is a very transient area, snowbirds descend upon us in the fall, then pack up and leave again in the spring. There is a large military base as well, which of course adds and subtracts to and from the population too. I say that, not to seek sympathy, or comment, but to give context to the rest this post.
As I have been finding what this next chapter and what my new normal might look like, I have been spending a lot of time, intentionally trying to find where I belong.
One of those places has been the writing community. Because there are no local groups to join, I have sought out like minded individuals online. As a result of attending the Author Nation conference in Las Vegas last year, I have been able to find just that. Between the discussion board within their site and the associated Discord channel, I have been having amazing conversations with authors around the world. They have supported me when I shared my story of grief. Challenged me to to think in ways about who I am as an writer that I may not have before. They have given me a roadmap to follow as I build my “author business”. Because after all, I want to make money doing this and need to treat it as such.
Another result of those conversations, has been finding my voice. I can’t say that I lost it, but I think that I allowed the imposter syndrome to drown it out for a while. Through the encouragement of one of these authors I’ve been chatting with, I am finding the stories that are living deep within me and pulling them out, putting them on paper in preparation to share with the world. Will they be for everyone? No. Will they find their right audience? That is my goal. They will resonate with someone. Even if it’s just one.
My future, I’m not sure yet what that holds. More books written and published, definitely. A move, most likely. Where to? Ideally, I’d love to move back to the Pacific Northwest. But life has it’s own plans not yet revealed. In the meantime, you’ll find me tucked away in my writing room, working on sharing the stories that currently live in my head.
