Waking Up

If you’ve been receiving my occasional emails and/or keeping track of me 
on Facebook, then you know that I’ve had some difficult years. The 
absence of activity on this blog through the last few years is certainly 
evidence of that. But I’m glad to say that a few months ago I felt my 
creativity starting to come back to life, and the writer in me is waking 
up.

Through this time I’ve been blessed with a new publishing opportunity 
and I’ve been able to at least manage doing revisions on the five 
volumes of my Horstberg Saga. If you haven’t already been aware of that, 
it’s written under the pen name Elizabeth D. Michaels, and it’s 
available in both Kindle and print format through amazon.com. I’m very 
grateful to finally have these books out there for my readers, and I am 
working with White Star Press to finish the last tiny editing details to 
get the last volume out by the first week of May.

But what I really want to share with you right now is how good it’s felt 
to be writing again. The writing process is entirely different from 
doing editing or revisions. One is a right-brain function, and the other 
is left-brained. In essence, I feel as if my right brain has been 
flatlined for a few years. Since writing is such an enormous part of who 
I am, having it go away has been difficult in many ways. My physical 
health has continued to be a big challenge, and I’ve felt removed from 
my life, so to speak. While I work with good doctors to continue to try 
and unravel the mysteries of my complicated health issues, I have found 
some joy in feeling the writer coming back to life in me. I’m mostly 
homebound, but it’s much more gratifying to sit at the computer and feel 
horrible than it is to be in bed with a remote control.

So, the purpose of this blog post is twofold. First I want to let you 
know that I have just submitted a new novel to Covenant Communications 
(my LDS publisher) and I’ve also given them a Christmas story that I 
wrote six years ago but never finished. I feel like Anita Stansfield is 
back—or at least she’s on her way. And it feels good. With any luck I 
won’t have lost my touch and the stories will be satisfying for you, my 
best fans.

The other purpose of this post is to let you know that I’ve felt 
inspired to start doing more writing in different ways. And one of them 
is to write more on my blog. So, I guess I’m making kind of an 
announcement. For those of you who are following my blog, I hope you 
might find the thoughts I write about here worth reading, and maybe even 
worth sharing with others. Sometimes my thinking is deep and analytical, 
sometimes spiritual or emotional—or both. Sometimes it might just be 
silly, because I’m actually kind of a silly, eccentric person. But I’ve 
spent my life writing, and looking at life through metaphorical eyes. 
And I feel strongly guided now to start sharing my thoughts, feelings, 
and insights more openly here on the World Wide Web. I’m not necessarily 
going to worry about editing or making what I write grammatically 
correct. This is just what comes out of my head.

So moving on to my current thoughts, I want to mention that where I live 
we are just emerging from a few very stormy days. Yesterday—in the 
middle of April—I laid in my bed early in the morning and watched 
beautiful, perfect snow falling. We had a lot of wind the previous day 
(scary wind that rolled over our little bunny house, but the bunnies are 
fine in case you’re wondering) and more wind came later that made the 
snow less lovely. But I love snow when it falls quietly without the 
influence of wind blowing it around. So, yesterday I just soaked it in, 
realizing that this last winter just didn’t have very much snow, and I 
think I was snow deprived. I know we need snow in the mountains in order 
to provide water for the coming months. But when I say I was snow 
deprived it’s more of an emotional thing. I really like snow, and I felt 
grateful for this unexpected burst of it in the midst of springtime.

The last few years I must confess I’ve wanted to hang onto winter; I 
didn’t want spring to come. The world renews itself and wakes up with 
spring, but I felt like another year had passed and I was still having 
the same old struggles: health, finances, inability to write. I almost 
resented spring for coming and preferred the quiet beauty of snow. This 
year I’m feeling better about the coming of spring because I’m waking up 
a little myself, even though some challenges still remain. Still, this 
final showing of winter was somehow soothing to me, and I’m grateful for 
its appearance. I feel less snow deprived, and it won’t hurt the water 
supply either. Next week I’ll probably be wanting to use my air 
conditioning, because my room is always the hottest room in the house, 
and I’m a woman in my fifties, therefore hot days are not necessarily 
enjoyable for me. I hole up with my computer and reading more than I go 
out and enjoy the fresh air. Perhaps that’s part of my creative 
personality, or perhaps I just have a tendency to live like a bat 
because I’m rather fond of Batman.

Either way, I feel more ready for spring now. My beloved irises are 
pushing their way up through the weeds and the dead plant life remaining 
from last fall. (We’re not big on doing yard work around here.) And the 
purple buds are starting to show themselves, even amidst the snow on the 
ground around them. And I’m pushing my way up too, through the storms 
and the weeds; I’m still here. I’m waking up.