Twenty Years

That is a lot of words and thoughts.

In January 2006, I wrote the following¹ on what was then Blogspot, if I recall correctly.

It’s a quiet Saturday morning here at Stonycroft. The kids are watching cartoons, **** is in Amherst performing a magic show, and Dad has gone to the dump. I have stolen a moment in the office to launch a blog. Hard to believe that ten years ago I barely knew what the internet was, much less how to use it (or a computer). I’ve always been an old-fashioned girl. Now I get to broadcast my thoughts globally. Frightening, that.

My quiet moment is coming to an end. Eldest just came in, hugged me with a big grin on her face and asked for a snack. And Little Man is making inquisitive noises in the other room. I think he wants me to come feed him. Although it is hard to tell, these days. He often just wants to be cuddled. Poor little guy - still no teeth, and all his sisters had a couple by this age - he’s cutting about four at once, I think. Molars. Six months old, and already he has to be different.

It is a beautiful day out. It has been snowing for two days and the sun came out today. It sparkles and shines, and the pine trees look like a postcard. It won’t last, but it is so neat to see them frosted like a wedding cake. I went out in the woods yesterday and it was hushed and still. The snow was draped over everything like a down comforter and it was still falling. I could hear the flakes fall, it was so quiet.

That post isn’t publicly available any longer, because I started out as a mommy blogger. Not, I think, what pops into your head when you read that phrase. My blog was for a few years a literal family journal, meant to exist to let my family and friends who lived in every corner of the globe know what was happening with my children as they grew so fast. At the time I started the blog I wasn’t writing. I’d written poetry and fiction in my teens, then stopped hard when, during an argument, my late husband told me that I relied too much on writing and I had to stop, and only speak. I know now that was one of many ways he was manipulating me, because writing allowed me to gather my thoughts and temper them before engaging in debates. He preferred to goad me into incoherence and confusion, and not leave any written records. I stopped writing then, in 1997, and didn’t start writing fiction again until the marriage ended in late 2009. Poetry has never really come back, although I’m beginning to dabble after the last year or so of transcribing great poetry for this blog.

There are a lot of ways my life could have gone. And a few moments where it could simply have stopped, and vanished unremembered. Instead, I have this archive of my own thoughts I can retrieve, if I like. Mostly, I prefer not to look back into the oldest history, because it’s painful. And yet… I have four wonderful human beings whose childhood is laid out in warm memories there. So it’s a balance of complex depth, as so much of life is, where we can tip one way or the other, and it’s important to know, before we step off onto the slack rope of our memories, just what we are capable of that day, and which way the wind is blowing.

Sometime in 2010 I was first published, was working on my first novel, and having studied marketing extensively for the business that I ran with my first husband, I switched gears with the blog. Right about then, as well, my job as a librarian put me through a class on Wordpress. I built a site for the library, which may still be functional although I sincerely hope much-updated. And armed with the knowledge, I went on to build my own site, CedarWrites.

Just the name alone was a statement, to myself. I was becoming a writer. And I wanted my words to have purpose, to be of use not only to myself but others. Since then, I’ve made a point of this blog not being merely a personal journal. It’s been intended to be useful, with recipes, garden tips, the occasional writing thoughts intended to be helpful but never prescriptive², and even, in time as I gained confidence, essays meant to be my small contribution to the Culture Wars. In between, as I wrote my fiction, I’d slip in small teasers, whet my skills with flash fiction and feedback in the comments, and finally, announce a book release.

In 2013 I went to LibertyCon for the second time, and met Dorothy and Peter Grant there. They sat and chatted with me, generous with their time, and Peter suggested that I seriously consider my blog an integral part of my business as a writer. Building an audience there would mean that my books would have a fanbase as they came out. He was right, and I knew it. He further suggested I blog every single day. He’d been doing that for years and had seen how consistent posts paid off. I went home and did just that. The thing is… I was also a full-time (and more than, up to twenty credit-hours in a semester) college student, a part-time parent at that point, and working two or three jobs to help defray costs. Blogging daily on top of all of that was minor insanity. I look back now and wonder how on earth I managed. I’m sure there were a lot of days of what I call ‘fluff and nonsense’ and this is also when I started the habit of daily drawing, so the art became a part of the blogging as well. Anything was grist for the mill under those conditions.

I think the only reason I was able to manage was that I was supported totally by my First Reader³, the Curmudgeon of the blog. I worked incessantly. I was deliberately and with decision a workaholic. I had a future to build, and with God’s grace, I built it.

In 2016 there was another shift in my life. I graduated from college, at the age of 40, with a BS in Forensic Science and Investigation. I wanted to build a career in science. Even though I’d published four (maybe five…) novels at that point, I put the writing on the back burner and devoted my life to my children, my husband, and the new career. Daily blogging went by the wayside. I was also blogging for the Mad Genius Club weekly, and had briefly blogged for Amazing Stories on a weekly basis. I can, still, sit down and toss off a thousand words on the flimsiest of topics, in what I hope is a mildly entertaining fashion. I wrote, and joked that I was now a ‘recovering workaholic’ which no one, not my friends and not even myself, believed.

Last year I became a full time writer and artist. My First Reader’s health means that every minute I have with him is precious, so even though it makes the finances difficult, I’m going to be by his side. My beloved father passed away just about a month ago as I write this, and he was one of my earliest supporters as a writer. I miss him terribly, but I’m going to write my garden book for him this year. Stonycroft, the farm where I lived when I started this blog, was bulldozed in 2014 and taken out of the family entirely a couple of years later. All of my children are grown and on their own, forging their lives without the constant demands on my time and attention I wrote about in those stolen moments so long ago. Twenty years is a long time to do something. I plan to keep doing it, for so long as I can. Hard to stop, really. I value the comments I get here, the community of people that I’ve come to know over those years. I need to be able to write, and I do, often.

I am no longer afraid. Now, I have a voice, and no one can take that from me. Quiet persistence, one day, one post at a time, have built something I never even dreamed possible when I was a young mother of four at thirty years of age.

Want to see what the next twenty years will bring? Well, so do I. Let’s do this.

Dad in the garden at Stonycroft. We kept the mints and the comfrey in the semi-circle of the driveway to prevent them from taking over the world.

1. Minor edits have been made, as the world is very different and names are changed to protect the innocent now.

2. No one approaches writing in the same way, nor should they.

3. So called because he read everything I wrote then, and was an integral part of my process as I bounced stories and ideas off him, refining as he suggested.