Begin with the Beginning...

Years ago, when I just finished graduate school I started writing this story, titled Sand and Stone. Even thought its a broken set of scenes and  jumps and skips toward the end, its one of my favourites, even in its ragged form. To try to explain what the story is about would be like trying to explain the make up of my own soul. So, here I am, five years later and I still haven't finished it. I think the reasons why I haven't finished the story are more telling about who I am as a person , a woman, a writer a person of faith, than almost anything else in my life.

Begin with the Beginning and End with the End 
When I was younger, much younger, and I'd talk to my best friend from high school on the phone, I'd often have so much to tell her that I never knew where to start. Leigh would always laugh at me and say simply, "begin at the beginning and end at the end." Its been one of a dozen or more tid bits of wisdom that she's blessed me with over the years. So, here I am, trying, in some sense to begin at the beginning.

I'm a writer who no longer writes. And I'm sure there are hundreds maybe even thousands of others like me out there, real, honest to God writers, that have completed MFA programs like I did, or written novels, has stories published and won awards... that have simply stopped writing. There are more of course, who are real writers, even if they haven't done any of those things yet, or ever, but my point in listing those kind of people, is that we were trained to write and told over and over, "write everyday" and "Never stop." So in a last ditch attempt at forcing my fingers to create people out of thin air, I'm starting a blog, something I not only never thought I'd do, but something I am as a write admittedly against. I'm against it for the simple fact that I've had the notion beat into me that if you put your work out on the web, anyone and everyone will take it. I've gone so far even, to do a "poor man's" copy right, by mailing my stories to myself and keeping them in sealed envelopes. Silly, I know. But when you've been told over and over that the written word is more precious than gold, you try to find a way to lock it in a safe.

I've come to realize, though, over the years the impact my writing can have. I thought lately that I should start even moving away from fiction and start writing non-fiction; maybe start to write about my life and my faith and how each has impacted the other. Maybe I've just read too much Don Miller. Or maybe I've spent to my boring work afternoons reading back logged blogs from one of my dear friends, to not take a stab at this too.

So, welcome to my journey.  Buckle up and hold on tight. Its often a bumpy ride. (But I wouldn't have it any other way.)