I write memoir and creative nonfiction and have pieces published in a number of literary and mainstream outlets. I write mostly about life at the intersection of grief and joy, navigating the in-between, and post-traumatic growth, as well as about FH (familial hypercholesterolemia), the genetic lipid disorder that has affected several members of my family. I am currently querying/submitting my memoir, The Full Catastrophe.

I previously wrote marketing and business copy for creative professional firms but have been away from that for a long time. My interests now center on poetry and fiction but I also enjoy humorous essays and history, especially the American Revolution and Colonial America.

I aspire to write far more than I do as I find it very hard to maintain focus so I will write voraciously for brief periods of time and then, poof, completely forget that it was a thing I was doing. My brain is funny this way and has done a fine job of making writing progress really, really difficult.

I've mostly written free-verse poetry over the last year, or so, when I have written but think often about writing essays and book-length fiction but the brain intervenes so I mostly just cobble together fragments of things here and there. It's highly disappointing and painfully frustrating. 

I'm looking to know what strategies for writing work for other people and how to feel like I deserve to prioritize my writing. This is a tall order, but I feel like if any people understand what I'm experiencing it's going to be other writers.

For more than 20 years, I have been working as a writer-for-hire, mostly on a freelance basis. Instead of writing articles for magazines and newspapers, I've written them for organizations: mostly hospitals, science-based nonprofits, disease research/advocacy foundations, and academia. Hey, it's a living, if not a great one. When I was younger, though, I had other ambitions and other aspirations. I wrote poignant essays that garnered much praise in classes and workshops, and I fully intended to continue on that path in the real world. Essays, book reviews (I have had just one published), poetry (one of mine made it to the top 25 in Writers Digest's annual competition), and a memoir were part of the plan. But financial worries and psychological impediments blocked my way. Many of my ideas died on the vine, and now the whole vinyard is withered. Can it be brought back to life? Well, that's the question. 

By the way, I'm also an experienced editor, having worked on books by individual authors as well as professional journal articles. I believe I could contribute meaningfully to a writing group's dynamic through supportive input and constructive suggestions. On the older side (to say the least--I just turned 73!), I just might be the "wise elder" in a group of millennials or gen-xers! Or I could be in a less age-diverse older group. 

Plus I'm lively, diplomatic, imaginative, and generous with my time and energy.

I have a feeling that a writing group could be a game-changer for me--a great antidote to the solitary nature of the writing life and the self-doubt that creeps in with too much solitude. It could also provide the nourishment my old, dried-out vinyard needs so that it could start producing fabulous new wine.