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A Well Crafted Life

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It might be silly, but for the first time in a long time I am happy to tell people what I do for a living. Before I would cough under my breath my profession. Not because I thought it as a bad profession, but because it wasn’t what I set out to do.

For a blip in my lifetime, I got to say that I was a journalist when someone asked my profession.

writer

“And, what do you do?” people would ask.
“Lifestyle Editor,” I’d say with a smile.

Well, now my smile is just a bit bigger… because for as LONG as I could remember I’ve wanted to be a  writer. And, while I’m not seeing my name in print anywhere (other than online) right now, I am seeing stories and books that I have ghostwritten being published as Ebooks and SELLING.

Over the past three months of being a Freelance Writer (the past month being my first full-time freelance writing gigs) I’ve written a lot of words. As a matter of fact, between my freelance work and my blogs, I’ve written (approximately) 200,000 words in the past three months. That is nearly as many words as Moby Dick. More words than a Harry Potter novel! The same amount of words as two of the Ender’s Game books.

It makes me wonder why in the world I have not finished my novel that I’ve been working on for about three years.

It is motivating me. And, for the first time in a while I have no problem with someone asking me what I DO.

What did you want to be when you grew up? Do you smile now when asked what you do? 

I have a lot of goals that I am continually trying to live up to. I guess it is just part of who I am. One of my many goals is to do something, anything, creative every day. Now, I have a lot of creative interests like cooking, graphic design, fiction writing, drawing, sewing, painting, crafting… the list goes on and on. So, it isn’t something I can always post about.

I’m not one to post my fiction on-line— well, at least not after the very embarrassing attempts at poetry I posted on my first weblog. (Anyone else out there have Xanga?)

A lot of my creative work lately has been writing ghost stories for my freelance gigs. So, not so much publishable.

In high school and college I was known to sketch (doodle) quite a bit. I’d often draw the big signs for our hallways and even got an award for my editorial cartoons. I don’t do it near as much as I’d like though. I love sketching and lettering. I love the way it feels to have pens crossing over completely blank paper.  So, lately I’ve been sketching again. I hope to keep it up. I’m posting my sketches over on Instagram on days that I like what I’ve drawn enough to share!

What do you do to hone your creativity?

Earlier this month I was a guest at a beautiful first birthday party put on by the fabulous Adi from Garden of Edlen. The party pics are up at my other blog…but, I had a lot of other photos from the event that I wanted to share. There are a couple that are a tad blurry…sorry!

Myself, Adi (Garden of Edlen) and Suzannah (Adventures in Dressmaking)

I’ve had the extreme fortune this past year of getting to know these two lovely ladies through the Portland Bloggers meet-ups. We’ve really had a lot of fun working on the Portland Bloggers group… but, memories like these are my favorite. We’ve become a part of each others lives outside of blogging, yet we get to keep up with each others day to day activities through blogging. It is like the perfect mix of social networking in the real world and the virtual world. Getting a little sappy over here.

This is pretty much my view all of the time. My kiddo walking with his dad right behind him making sure he doesn’t fall too hard. I’m pretty smitten with the two of them.

And, this is what Jack and X looked like near the end of Jack’s first birthday party. They were totally worn out by all the fun. Go check out the lovely party images of Jack’s Wild Rumpus and get some ideas for an awesome “Where the Wild Things Are” party!