I never thought I’d write Selma In The City again. It was a big part of my life for ten years. It taught me a lot, especially about the different ways people look at the world, improved my writing skills and showed me the value of belonging to a writing community. In my final year of writing the original version of Selma In The City I went through a lot of life changes including a marriage break up and a career change. I spent the years following those changes working very hard to support myself and my son and rarely wrote any fiction at all.
Now I’m going through another self-imposed life change, taking time off from a demanding career to write the novel I’ve always wanted to write. I thought I would start this blog up again to talk about my writing journey and to also write about other things I observe and am thinking about that occur outside the scope of my novel.
For the longest time the curtain in my writing room has been drawn. The light has filtered through onto my desk at various times of the day, making shadowed marks like rock carvings, but the curtain has remained closed. Now I will open the curtains as I write. The room is quiet, sunspots previously blocked by fabric now dance on the wall. It is a form of returning to something I once knew and always dreamed of, a gathering and setting free of stories waiting to be told.