Ahoy my faithful followers, I know it has been awhile. Not that I haven’t been thinking about you or had every intention of writing this blog. It’s just that… well, I’ve let life to get in the way. I don’t think that’s such a bad thing, at least at this stage of my writing career. Like a lot of other writers this is not my main source of income and although I hope one day to be dedicated entirely to writing, at ‘the moment’ I have to work at other things to bring in some dollars.
For me the main source of my income is generated from making hanging flower baskets, selling a few paintings, doing some minor administrative work for other authors and teaching horsemanship to children and adults. Teaching horsemanship and making flower baskets are very much weather dependant, so the spring and summer months can get crazy busy.
All that said, I think being “crazy busy” is a good thing. It just doesn’t leave much time for my creative writing side – not that I don’t have all kinds of ideas buzzing through my gray matter also known as my brain, but taking the time to formulate my thoughts into a story people will want to read, well that’s another matter altogether. I do however take the moment to jot ideas down either in my notes app on my IPhone, or scribble on a scrap of paper, whichever comes first.
I have so much I want to share with you but in my hopes of keeping this blog post reasonably short (insert laughter here), I did want to share a bit of my personal life with you my faithful readers. As you may recall my last post was around “pivoting”, and my struggles with “little Miss Self Doubt” – that nauseating little demon that chatters in my head when I am writing. Perhaps I should be clear that “little Miss Self Doubt” can chatter when I’m doing almost anything, not just writing. She can show up when I’m doing pretty much anything I’m not one hundred percent confident with. There is one exception, and that’s almost anything to do with my horses – that’s when “Little Miss Self Doubt” takes a back seat! I am extremely confident and very happy when I am with my horses!
So to bring you up to speed about something that has nothing to do with writing, I have been looking for a younger horse to purchase for the last six months or so. I was hoping to purchase a ‘warmblood’, which is a breed of horse that I could ride Dressage on (another term you non horsey folks won’t understand – but think of ballet on horseback). Anyhow, I realized my dreams of a Dressage horse were not likely to come to fruition due to financial constraints, so I made a ‘pivot’ in my horse search and purchased a young Quarter Horse (Quarter Horse is another breed of horse) Gelding (think neutered male dog for you non horse people), that possessed the natural athleticism I was seeking. My new horse’s registered name is HC Black Drifter, and the everyday name that I decided to give him is “Pivot”. It just seemed fitting with a lot of what is going on in my life at the moment.
So where am I going with this you might ask. Well, I’m making another pivot. I’ve decided to listen to what so many others have been saying to me, and that is, “Write about what you know”. So, going forward, my stories, and perhaps even my Blog, will have horses layered in, and my journey with Pivot will likely have a strong voice in my writing. I believe this change will help me to keep the creative juices flowing. I have some wonderful ideas that I truly hope will both inspire me and spark a following. If not, that’s okay, but for now that’s the direction I’m going to pursue.
In keep with my blog format, here is a quote from someone we all know.
“Yes, I’ve made a great deal of dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it … I have written because it fulfilled me … I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.” — Stephen King
I think I’m going to take my lead from one of the masters, have a great week or two……
Tamara
Tamara Mercer 