I cannot forget that I am the Captain of my Canoe.

Since I was a little girl, I've had a passion for writing. While in fifth grade, I proposed starting up a newspaper with my friends in the neighborhood. Despite that unsuccessful venture, I started writing professionally when I joined the Longview News-Journal in 1997. After I left the newspaper, I wrote technical instructions and website content for over a decade before turning to ad copywriting and product descriptions. In my free time, these days, ideas swirl around me as I contemplate which of my short stories could be transformed into novels. 

I find I am the most creative early in the day so I like to have a quiet house and my laptop or my iPad. After I write a bit, I find I like to talk about it to my friends so they can help me flush out my thoughts best.

The short answer is that I have a thousand thoughts in my head and I need to get them out so I have room for more thoughts. 

The long answer is that it frees me. It is where I don't have anyone telling me what to write or how to write. Writing lets me untangle my thoughts that swirl in my head. This is something that is solely mine. My writing is where my imagination and reality can live at peace with each other.

I work a regular 9-5 job; I love spending time with my family and friends; I have to clean the house; and I have kids and pets to visit with when I get off work. 

Since I have a regular job, I make time in the morning for writing and in the evenings for marketing my writing. Several of my co-workers work the evening shift at work, so I find I do well 'working' their hours, this gives me the structure I need to do the hard parts of writing. 

I always have enjoyed writing. I have always been scared to share my work because I was afraid of how it would be perceived. Grief changed me. I am not afraid. Writing a memoir just came to be.

Writing the memoir was actually me just finding my outlet for my emotions. I would share pieces of what I wrote to my friends and so many said that my writing was how they felt while grieving many things (divorce, loss of family member, and job loss for example).

I also noticed that none of the grief books I was trying to read showed grief in the moment. Everyone was writing from a place of acceptance. I wrote through all of those waves of emotions.