"My Writing Process" Blog Tour

Hello all,
I've been asked to participate in the “My Writing Process” blog tour. I post today, and will invite three writers to carry the tour forward on their own blogs the following week.  I was invited to participate by my soul sister, the talented and intensely creative Lori Landau. Lori is one of the most beautifully loving souls I know. Her heart shines through in her art. She is intensely creative, interweaving spirituality into her paintings, photography and writing. See Lori's work here: www.consciousnesscreativity.com

The "My Writing Process Blog Tour" Questions:

1) What am I working on? 

I am in discussions with a wonderful publisher about getting my new memoir "Wind To Wildfire" published. What is the book about, you may ask? This best sums it up:

Imagine waking up tomorrow with no home, no job, no clothes. What if you had no ID, no credit, no pets, no family photos, no history? Who would you be if you lost everything?

This happened to me, and my family. It began with a housefire in the middle of the night that almost took our lives. As my husband and I jumped from second story windows with our children, our house and home-based businesses burned to the ground. We were released from the hospital homeless and jobless with two young children to support. Though the news cycle moves on, disaster doesn’t end when the fire is out. Over the next two years, we were bankrupted, lost our credit and our social standing, and watched our friends and even family pull away. And yet, this is not a sad story. When everything I identified with was gone, I was given the rare (and painful) gift of discovering who I really was. I learned that happiness can be found in the midst of disaster. And as my marriage began to erode under the stress of loss, I found that even when pushed to the edge, love can survive. This is a story of loss, hope and renewal, of love lost and found again.

"Wind to Wildfire" will hopefully be released in 2015. Stay tuned....

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?  

I write memoir and personal essay, and I can only say that is differs because my story, your story, every life story is rich and unique. Though there are many memoirs about marriages that fall apart tragically and fantastically, few that show how love can last . Mine shows how we almost fell apart, and how we worked to stay together.
 

3) Why do I write what I do? 

Because it is in me and it must come out some how. Because I write what I know. Because For too long I buried the truth about who I was. After writing Dancing at the Shame Prom, telling the truth felt so good, I just couldn't stop.
 

4) How does my writing process work?

I've been keeping a journal since I was in the second grade, so writing is really second nature to me. Since I have kids, I have to be disciplined about writing.  In writing my last book,  I wrote for every hour my son was in school. I did not answer the phone. I did not wash the dishes. If the cat puked, I didn't clean it up until my six writing hours were completed. Gross, I know. But I wrote three books that way.

For me, writing memoir is like vomiting. You don't want to do it. You dread doing it. But you feel a lot better after it's all out and on the page. That's beautiful and poetic, right?

That pretty much sums up my writing process. What's yours? 

Next I am to pass the baton to three bloggers. Please let me know if you are a blogger and you'd like to participate!