About My Writing Journey

Welcome and THANKS for dropping by!  I so hope you will find something here that jumps from my heart to yours.

I am a Midwest, small-town lovin’ creative.  I am a champion of nonprofits.  I believe outside is the best place to find peace, wonder and an attitude adjustment.  I have an unparalleled inner circle; their unwavering love and support is my foundation.      

I appreciate you taking the time to learn a bit about me and my writing journey.  I wrote my first short story (George the Jumping Bean) when I was six.  I am sure it was a treasured part of my 1st grade teacher’s literary collection for many years.  I have always thought writing was what I came here to do.  But life happened and, while I did have several pieces published in anthologies, I am just now building a body of stand-alone work.   

While I will always wonder what could have happened if I had prioritized creative passions earlier in my life, I can’t say that I am discouraged by the fact I waited until the last decades of my life to pull what is uniquely me out of me, through my hands, and into being.  The great news is that I have a lot of life in the rearview mirror and I think that makes my approach to creating richer, deeper, more authentic.   

I gravitate to the shorter forms of creative writing (short stories, children’s books, poetry).  I love the impact of telling an entire story in just a few words.  My writing encompasses poetry, short stories, children’s books, tentative voyeurism into the world of song writing as well as over a two decades in the practical world of technical writing (OSHA compliance manuals, employer policies, how-to manuals and website content for example).

Most of my work has a back story or inspiration known only to me.  Sometimes, though, the words just come to me but aren’t from my life experience.  An example of this is my poem, Winter Sister.  I do have two amazing sisters but this poem is not about us.  I had the poem displayed at an event a few years ago.  A lady walked up to it and read it.  She started crying and said I wrote it about her sister who had taken her own life.  I never met her sister but this kind of guttural connection is one of the reasons I write.  I love that those words touched her and she was able to own them in a very personal way.  I felt honored that those words connected her to someone she loved so dearly in that moment.  Some of my writing comes from life experiences witnessed in others or from things they say.  But, at the end of the day, what really matters is that the words weave themselves around and through the frames of the reader’s life experience; becoming uniquely theirs.  

I think of any kind of art as a personal language spoken by the artist.  There is no more life affirming moment than when someone else understands that language.  

I want to encourage all of you to create Amazon and Goodreads reviews for the books you like (happy to send you a step by step “how to do this”); especially those written by newer or as of yet not widely known writers.  Only 1 in 200 people do a review. They are not difficult to complete and can be as basic as ‘I liked this’ or ‘I loved this one poem (or story, or chapter)’.   

More than that, though, I want to really encourage any of you who have a long-held dream unrealized to never think it is too late.  Now is the time – get to doing it whatever it is.  Don’t look back with regret, look forward (it is the only way to see where you are going when chasing a dream).