Blog Amiss: Stories from the Heart

Today, I got a note from a friend who’s missing the notes I leave on my personal blog. I’ve been silent there for more than 2 months . . . not a good record for an author who’d like to use her blog to build her brand as well as to share her world with whomever hangs out long enough to read it.

Blogging isn’t easy for me. I never thought of myself as a particularly private person, but blogging just feels odd. If I post personal stuff, I think I’m being too self-indulgent. If I talk too much about my books or work, I feel materialistic.

I’d really rather just write my stories.

Earlier this year, I made a plan to be more regular with my blogging. Life sorta bungled in, however. Schedules changed, work got weird, folks got sick, including me. Then my mom had heart problems. A stint in one artery collapsed, requiring a long hospital stay, and I wound up in Alabama for more than a week. Everything else in my world came to a halt, and I’m still trying to catch up. But I find that I’m weary. And I keep thinking about the notebook.


My mom’s notebook.

For some time, she’s been writing down everything she can remember about her childhood and teen years. She graduated from high school in 1945, and she still has all her report cards, graduation materials, even a newspaper from a senior trip. But the notebook is the real treasure – pages and pages of stories about her family and her adventures. Whenever she has a story to share, she pulls it out.

I come from a long line of great Southern storytellers. When other families watched TV or went to the movies, my folks sat around on the porch and told tales.

Only . . . the notebook is missing. When we got her back from the hospital we couldn’t find it.

We will. It’s too precious to lose forever.

My blog isn’t my mother’s notebook, that’s for sure. But I think the blog will be better, at least for right now, if I stop planning and just keep dreaming. And writing when I have something to say. Maybe next week. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe when I get enough sleep.

After all, I’m working on a new book. I have a hero to pick and a heroine to show off. Stories about how the tale came to be. And . . . someday . . . I’m going to write about what’s in the notebook.