As a verified Space-Age baby, who watched the first landing and first steps for mankind on the moon back in 1969 on a grainy black-and-white television, and who grew up believing Tang was definitely better than fresh-squeezed orange juice, I was glued to the live feed of those four wonderful humans who circled our companion celestial object and came back again. I’m unashamed to say I held my breath when that blackout time came as they burned through our atmosphere, and wept when their capsule came back safely to the arms of the sea.

Part of it was the achievement, of course, and getting to see video and photos of the mysterious back side of the moon and the miraculous beauty of our blue, brown and green planet floating in all that black emptiness, but mostly it was the four astronauts who completely captivated me. Their wonder and joy in what they were doing was evident in every moment. Playful, smart, serious, and articulate, four respectful teammates who worked well together and who clearly loved doing their jobs. And the magnificent ground crew who worked right alongside them. Mission Control back in action. Calm, competent people who the four in space could rely on to do their part, no matter the hour.

Seeing humans like that in action blessed me with an infusion of excitement and hope that helped to blow me out of my auto-accident induced doldrums* and get back to writing again after nearly a month of barely being able to string together a thousand decent words a day.** I climbed into my writing chair and got back to work. There were a few stutters and stops, and I was often reminded how much I rely on my version of mission control. My friends, advisors, and family, along with going for long swims, hikes, and walks.*** It took hefty doses of all of them to keep me on track in the first few days back. There were a couple of times when the re-entry was rough, and I wanted to hurl my computer over the balcony, but I refrained, trusted the process, and little by little, I’ve been getting my groove back.

The editing program I use to help me correct my comma problem hates the oxford comma. It endlessly tells me that there doesn’t need to be a comma in front of the word ‘and’ when making a list. I beg to differ. Being the human in the equation gives me the upper hand (at least for now, goodness knows what will happen with AI in the coming years), so I put those oxfords back where I want them. The program also wants me to insert a hideous number of semi-colons, whose very existence I loathe, but every once in a while I give the thing a little victory and allow one into my manuscripts. Side note: why has Word gone to making the incredibly ugly Aptos font the default? I have to go in every time and change it to good old Times New Roman, or else I can’t write a word.

The internal mental sigh that seeing Aptos appear every time I start a new document and needing to change it before I can begin could, of course, just be another sneaky writing evasion tactic. I have oodles of them, ranging from needing to wish everyone a happy birthday on Facebook, to getting the dishes clean before I start writing, to putzing around on IG where people make the most creative reels ever. I can lose half an hour scrolling if I’m not careful, but there’s a lot of good laughs in the process, so not all bad. It’s for sure highly addictive though, on the level of cheese cravings. I have to intentionally put my phone in the other room when I finally cave to having to get rolling on my word count for the day.

Writing is my third career, fourth if you count being a mom, which really shouldn’t even be a point of controversy, but sadly, I’ve run into plenty of people who disagree, mostly because there isn’t a paycheck attached to it. There should be, if life were fair, but of course we all know it’s not. Anyway, writing is the career I’ve always secretly wanted, and even now, three years into doing it full-time and actually, legit paying my bills with it, I can’t quite believe my luck. I was asked the other day by one of my sons if writing has become a job rather than a joy at this point, and my knee-jerk reaction was to say, yes, it’s become a job, because the grind is a big pain some days, and being behind on your production schedule can become an existential crisis that requires an immediate nap before you hurl yourself into the dark abyss, let alone the insidious self-doubt that shows up every time the words drag, but then I stopped myself.

Yes, I have to make a massive effort to get rolling every morning to get the first words on the page, and there are still some days when I just don’t have the sand to spin a story from nothing, and yes, that makes me fearful that I’ll never write a decent sentence or weave a good yarn again. But then comes a writing roll, and I lose time, completely caught in the telling of the tale. Or I’ll fall in love with a character and giggle at what they say or do next. A high point is when I go through to proof something I wrote a week or so ago and actually like what I wrote.

I usually come to hate the chapters I’m producing (my average pace is two 5-6,000 word chapters every 4-5 days) by the time I’ve worked them and worked them, then fed the stupid things into the stupid comma-correction software before I send the awful bunch to my editor for his approval, so it’s nice to circle around and have the bump of satisfaction as a reader of the not-so-bad words a week later. (I circle-write, a topic for another day.) It sparks joy, as Marie Kondo would say. I also have the joy of naming certain characters after people who’ve done me wrong over the years and killing them in horrible ways, so there’s that, too, ha. It makes me wonder if someone named Stark did something dreadful to JRR Martin when they were boys.

Aside from being a published author of twenty-six books and three novellas, soon to be twenty-seven books once I get the last book in The Silent Tide series written, I’m also a playwright. As far as being a writer goes, the very best thing I get to do is to sit in the back of a theatre watching wonderful actors say words that were conjured from thin air, and seeing the audience react to them. That hush as the curtain rises, the belly laughs from the comedy, or the brief silence as strangers in the dark experience an emotion together… it’s magical. Perhaps even more so because the nature of live theatre means it exists only in those few hours, and will never be experienced in quite the same way ever again. I am beyond thrilled that I get to have that experience again this fall, when Exit, Pursued by a Bear theatre company puts Death by Design, my quirky, closed-room murder-mystery/ comedy on the stage. I can’t wait.

By now, you may have realized that the true answer to my son’s question is yes, my fourth career is still a joy for me. And isn’t that a lovely thing to realize?

*If you missed the blog all about the accident and the lovely people who live in Louisiana, you can find it here: https://eatwriteplay.com/on-ptsd-bandwidth-and-the-kindness-of-strangers/

**If you’re a writer whose goal is to hit 1k words per day, don’t let this rankle you. We’re all different about writing pace and progress. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Period. Doesn’t matter how fast or how perfectly, or if you ever publish one thing.

***An example of an Oxford comma in action that ProWritingAid desperately wanted me to erase. Never!