Just a few weeks ago, I got to meet the lovely Melissa Marr. She mentioned something that kind of stuck with me (probably because I asked the question that sparked it!) She said that even when she is not sitting at her computer and typing words onto the screen, she is writing.

I thought a lot about that last night as I configured my Web site to eventually take over my writing- and reading-related blog posts once I get a professional domain name again. I haven’t done much in word count over the past several months, but I am always jotting down ideas, picking up neat phrases, and thinking about characters and plots and story lines.

This past weekend, Adam and I went down to lovely Normal, IL (it reminded me a lot of Columbus and made me a little bit homesick!) to celebrate the Young Authors of Illinois. Students from all over the state having written poems or stories so well that they deserved state-wide recognition. It was inspiring to see how excited the kids got when they met the authors. I participated in Young Authors when I was in the 7th or 8th grade (are you surprised?), but I didn’t get far enough to meet authors.

Being there reminded me of a few of my past writing accomplishments. There aren’t a whole lot, but they’re there. There is the album review that got published in The Plain Dealer about 15 years ago. The same newspaper posted an article about the island of Catawba in Ohio that I’d written, but I no longer have it. When I was in elementary school, I won 2nd place in a citywide contest in which I had to write an essay of what I liked best about Cleveland.

As my friend Ivy said, I have the soul of a writer. So even though I may not be an author (yet), I AM a writer and I always will be a writer. So this journal will be about that journey as a writer. This journal will discuss the books that have inspired me and pushed me. It’ll talk about meeting with authors, I’ll talk my thought processes. I’ll talk about the ups and downs of writing. Just writing. Not focusing only on the journey to becoming an aspiring author. Not as someone rushing to make word counts because of some arbitrary goal. Not being someone pushing for perfection on the first shot (OK, this is easier said than done!). No. For now, I want to be Simply a Writer.