I’m Baaaack!

I’ve missed this space! This past week, I’ve been thinking that I needed to get back into regular, personal writing for several reasons.

First of all, I need to get all this hot mess out of my head! I’ve heard fiction authors say that they have no idea how a story is going to end up until they actually write it. I think that’s true to an extent for non-fiction writing as well. I may have a vague idea of my feelings, but I often find myself surprised by their depth and/or direction when I read what I’ve written in my journal. Of course, this space is a bit less spontaneous, but when I listed out some possible blog topics yesterday, I came up with well over 30! My goal was to come up with 7, so that tells me I have quite a bit to share with you all.

Second of all, I teach writing for a living, and I discovered that I haven’t been practicing what I preach. I tell my students that writing becomes easier the more they just do it and that writing well, while an art, does take practice. I tell them that all employers—and life in general—require effective and efficient communication. Like other skills, writing can become rusty if not done on a regular basis. Here comes the oil can.

Third of all, I’ve been thinking of ways to supplement my adjunct professor’s salary, and decided that freelance writing, which I have done already, would certainly fit the bill. But if I want to write stuff that people want to read—and pay for!—then I need to get myself back into the game. While I loved writing for the homeschool market previously, I was never able to make (much) money from it, and frankly, as a single mom, I need to maximize my earning potential within my current time constraints. So, part of the public writing I hope to do in the next few weeks will be exploring new topics that fit within these parameters.

Let me know what kinds of stuff you’d like to read here in this space as well as what kinds of content you’d be willing to pay to read (in other venues).