A Spoonful of Raspberries

I contemplate what to eat for breakfast.

Cereal? Nay... Oatmeal? On occasion. Yougart with fruit? I really like that. But it has to have granola in it. I need some crunch.

So that's what I'll start you off with today. Fruit. A spoonful of writerly raspberries, plump and red and juicy along with my summerly adventures sprinkled with a bit of new-found wisdom.

I'm what you would call a self-diagnosed spazz. I have lots of energy, which means I must keep busy or I'll lose what sanity I have. But even my spastic personal needs balance. This is something I learned over the summer.

As some of you know, I took July and August off from blogging, with the exclusion of a few posts to help fellow authors promote themselves and their new releases. Here's where the birth of new wisdom comes into play. Although I did write three nonfiction pieces that were published in Martial Arts Magazine, I backed off from all other writing all together. I took what I'd call a Life Sabbatical.

Living in our environments while dreaming outside our surroundings to create fantastical worlds for our stories is vital to a writer's life. I'd forgotten how to simply LIVE, thus tap into that writerly place. With four children, I've had to be scheduled up to the gills in order to tend to their needs, wants, and goals. And I've been good at it; but being so regimented has clouded that natural fervor and childlike trust in living.

For the past eight weeks, I've taken life as it comes, letting it fill me with new passions and hopes. I've attended high school boys summer soccer and ice hockey games, and U14 girls soccer games. I read a ton of YA at requests from publishers (reviews will be forthcoming), went to a water park, took long walks with my daughter, helped my youngest rollerblade, attended a wedding and lots of high school grad parties, and barbecued a ton, enjoying all I've been given. I've even been working on my official author website. It's felt like a right of passage for me, the writer. Kind of like preparing my oldest son for college. He'll be attending classes, growing and learning, just as he's done since he began kindergarten. Only now he has different convictions and purposes.

Same goes for me. Most of you are aware of my good news about receiving offers for my YA book and signing with a fabulous agent. I'm excited to be on this new road in my writing career and I'm thrilled you'll be there with me. I'll still be writing, reading, and editing, only with different convictions and purposes. Oh, and please be patient with my Writers Ally site. From time to time you'll see changes and widgets disappearing. I'll be relocating some of the information here to my new website, which I hope to launch sometimes this fall. Stay tuned for my bigger-than-a-shopping-mall giveaway beginning Monday the 10th!!

I've missed you, and I'm so glad to be regularly blogging again! Looking with high hopes to what this Fall brings me and each of you!!