why i write

August 15, 2014 by Heather 9 Comments

Thank you to Crystal at Living in Green Grass for throwing these four lovely questions my way! You can find her answers here, but do a little digging and you’ll find a great little story about the frog that was, too.

And now…here we go…

What am I writing/working on right now?

This. This is it. 365 days of practice. I’ve done some work in children’s curriculum and I think I would like to do more writing for children when I have more time, when my own children are older. This is what I have time for now.

How does my work differ from others of it’s genre?

I’m not sure it does. I think if my quest is to say something that hasn’t before been written, I will fail miserably. I will often read a piece and say…to myself of course…I have thought, written, read, said, that same exact thing! I think my work differs simply because it’s me saying it. My children, my friends, the people I sit next to in the pew on Sunday morning can hear it from a million other unknown sources, but those people all know me. Issues, opinions, laughter, they all tend to have more of an impact when the speaker is someone with whom you have dined. This is where I speak. This is where, for better or for worse, all of those people can hear me. That can be found no where else. Hopefully that is a blessing to us both.

Why do I write what I write?

I know my mom is going to print out every word of it and put it in a binder. Honestly, that hinders the process a little bit. It’s not necessarily a bad thing though. It’s one of the reasons I started this blog. What I was writing before fit very neatly into the categories of family and faith, but there are other types of writing, other subjects that I can broach here without it seeming out of place. Here nothing is out of place. It helps me to organize the unorganizable. (That’s gonna be a real word someday.) I write so I can say things I might never say out loud. They are the things that give me goosebumps or things for which I can find no voice. Here they find a home.

How does my writing process work?

I do my best thinking in the shower. So on many days I can be seen throwing clothes on and mumbling to myself until such time as I reach the computer to feverishly write down everything that came to mind while in the peace and quiet of flowing waters. I can be seen shushing my children and saying, “yes” without really listening, only to have to make myself stop so I can actually go back and make a good, solid parenting decision. My process is knee deep in frustration most days because I’m not able to say what I really want to due to a lack of time or attention or motivation or just plain ignorance of the subject which currently occupies a good portion of my brain. I hinder myself by not doing even close to as much reading as I should. Hopefully soon, I’ll get a schedule figured out that allows time for that on a regular basis. Part of the fun of being here is that you never know what you’ll find when you open your browser and click on another post. Part of the fun is that I don’t know either. 🙂

 

Next in the hot seat is my real life, so close I could pinch her…well when we lived two miles from one another I could do that, now it’s a little more difficult…friend, Julie.

This is Julie. Lovely isn’t she?

Julie took a journey and finally found her home in Christ at the age of 22. Her journey has grown and she loves to share her feelings about her experiences. Julie relishes in the fact that God provides her with daily forgiveness and grace. With each passing day, she yearns to delve deeper to become closer to the one that created her.

She is a farm wife, mother of three girls, and a grandmother to another little gal! She started in this thing called blogging two years ago, and now juggles two blogs. She loves to write about her family and life experiences and how God has taken her on a journey she never expected!

She takes her cooking seriously and when doing it for others brings her the most joy anything possibly could! She is lucky to call the Midwest her home and recently became a stay at home farm mom after 19 years in the insurance industry.

Brownies and toast are her comfort foods and laughing with her sisters in Christ opens her heart and mind up more than she ever imagined. Laying in her hammock, hearing “Seek Ye First” being sung by her youngest, and being in her husband’s arms are some of her favorite things.

You can find Julie at In Between the Sunsets of Life, but make sure to stop by her newest project, Pushing Forward with Grace, where she too writes every day, for her answers to these very same questions next week.