Recently, my aunt--my father's only sibling and a voracious reader/former high school English teacher--asked me if I was doing any writing these days.
I guess it was a valid question, because I have three published books to my name. (The illustrated My Little ABC Book was entirely self-published a couple of years ago via one of those "vanity presses," mostly to print as gifts for friends and family; but I'll still count it.)
My response to my aunt's question was, "No, I don't really write anymore. I think that was a phase."
That really is how it seems to me: it was not a writing career; it was a writing phase.
Between 2007 (when the youngest of our five sons started his freshman year of high school) and 2014 (when he was in college and his four older brothers had all gotten married and were starting their families), I admit that I did a lot of writing, a lot of thinking about writing, a lot of writing about writing, a lot of Internet corresponding with other writers. Writing consumed a good deal of my thoughts and energies, to put it mildly. But that was a different time: when I started writing Finding Grace in 2007, all four of our oldest sons were either in college or beginning careers far from where they grew up in NH, and our youngest son was off at school every day after five years of being homeschooled. I was often alone in an empty house. So it's not surprising that I suddenly found myself with many free hours during my days to devote to writing, something I'd always dreamed of doing--especially since my airline pilot husband would often be away on trips for three or four days at a time. I had hours to fill and I filled them at my computer, writing the one novel I ever thought I would write, positively giddy with the process of bringing characters to life and seeing where they would lead me. I grew to just love Grace and Tom and Sully and their families and friends, and I missed them when the five-year process of getting FG to print was over.
After Erin's Ring (the second novel I never thought I'd write) was published in 2014, I kicked around the idea of a third novel, an historical fiction sequel to ER about an amazing Marian apparition that is not well known. I did some research, read a book about the event, printed off some online articles about it...I even wrote a first chapter for a story wherein the same characters from ER would once again find their lives interwoven with those of an earlier era. But that project never really got off the ground. As the number of grandchildren we were given to love quickly multiplied, my motivation to do writing of any sort kind of faded into the sunset. I just didn't have the impetus to do it anymore.
So much has changed since 2014! Thanks to our move to VA in 2017, we live close to our four oldest boys and their families now (including all 17 of our grandchildren!), except during the summers, which we spend in NY; we have a very full and busy grandchild-centered life. Family takes up the bulk of our time again, just as it did when we were raising our boys. So the idea of putting that kind of energy and time into writing a novel now? It's hard to imagine.
As I said, it must have been a phase.
Does that make me a bit pathetic? I don't think so. Could I be more ambitious, more driven? Sure. But I believe we are all meant for different things, and I was not meant to be a professional writer.
Will I ever write another novel? I highly doubt it, but who knows? I was never going to write a second one, and then Erin's Ring happened. God works in mysterious ways. If He wants me to write another book, then maybe I will.
But at present, He seems to be telling me that I'm in a different phase these days, one that doesn't include writing books. It does, however, include lots and lots of THIS:
It's a good phase. A very good phase.
