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Hello, and welcome!  Some may be surprised that I’ve begun a blog: I’ve previously been anti-blog, because I wasn’t sure that I really had anything to say.  But this is typical of the way my writing has evolved through the years.  After I left college at the age of 19 to try to write on my own, I wasn’t sure that I had anything important enough to say.  So I kept quiet.

I wrote and wrote during this time, filling notebooks and experimenting with character, voice, and style.  But I kept most of my writing hidden, unsure if I was good enough. I told myself I was gaining life experience as I worked in dead-end job after dead-end job: coffee jobs, movie jobs, bookstore jobs, MoMA design store jobs, more and more coffee and bookstore jobs.

Every now and again, I’d take a writing class.  Teacher after teacher loved my work and encouraged me to keep going. I finally decided that I didn’t want to keep working in jobs that made me miserable.  With the support of my soon-to-be husband, I went back to school at Harvard’s Extension School part-time, taking two writing classes.

I kicked ass in those classes, and both teachers wrote me recommendations for Emerson College, where I enrolled full-time.  And I fell in love with writing all over again, but the big difference was that this time I believed in myself.  I knew that I had people in my head whose stories only I could tell.

Please take a leap forward with me: I’ve been out of school for 10 years.  I’m now a freelance editor with an academic publisher, wife, mom to two, and we’ve set up house in Brooklyn.  I’ve led writing groups and I’ve joined writing groups.  I’ve published a short story.  I’ve let life get in the way of my writing a lot, and I’ve had lots of starts and stops.

So where does this blog figure in?  I’m now actively working on a novel, and I’m ready to talk about it–the highs, the lows, and everything in between.  I’ve realized that the world of publishing has changed a lot since I first became aware of it, and is still changing.  I’m going to use this blog as my sounding board, and as many of you know, I now have a LOT to say.