After graduating from my BA program with my degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing, I promptly set to work finding a job. That was the reason I had gone back to college, put myself tens of thousands of dollars into debt, and suffered through college algebra – to improve my career opportunities.

I took my shiny new diploma and got a job with a local nonprofit writing words for them on a blog and in other published media. I still didn’t really think of myself as a “writer”. But I hoped to be. During that time, I also started two blogs for myself, went through some challenging personal experiences, got married, had a baby, blah, blah, blah…

In my mind, I was just going to be a nonfiction writer. I really had no desire whatsoever to write fiction. Actually, I didn’t think I could. Besides, there are plenty of folks already out there doing that well, right? Also, I loved the work I was doing.

I’ve always been great at rationalizing my decisions to move away from the difficult thing.

Then, one morning I awoke from a very vibrant dream. It was one of those dreams that seems so real you have to kind of shake yourself out of it. It was very cinematic… as if I was watched it through a window, or on a screen. And I knew, as I told my husband what I saw, I was just given my first little nugget of a piece of fiction I would write one day.

I found a notebook and a pen, and proceeded to write down everything I could remember. The colors, the feelings, the mood, the people, the landscape… I was as detailed as I could be. For a couple of weeks, this dream really stuck with me. I put words on paper, some names of characters who might be in this story, locations and time period. I even developed a cast list for the story as if it were a major motion picture. Steve Buscemi and Don Cheadle may be on that list…

Not long after, the story was put away, and I didn’t pick it up for a few years. Eventually, I left that full-time job and started writing for local publications and creating website content for clients. Someday, I thought, I’ll have more time to work on that story idea I had.

There was a time in there when I was listening to The Civil Wars’ first album on repeat and I knew that they were hitting the mark in terms of the mood of the story. I’ll admit, I fantasized a bit about them playing on the soundtrack for the film adaptation. (Dream big!!) Then they broke up and ruined everything. *sigh*

But I digress….

Last fall I started feeling a nagging little tug that seemed to be telling me it was time to be writing more fiction. A friend was working on the final edits for her own debut novel, I had applied for a fellowship at a nearby writers’ colony, and I started thinking this year was going to be a turning point of some kind.

I didn’t get the fellowship, but my husband encouraged me to find time to go to the writers’ colony anyway. My fiction story just seemed to be bubbling up to the surface. This month, as I polished up the original notes I wrote to create pages for the writers’ group I’m in, the nagging really just climbed into my lap and sat there. Just as I felt on the day I first described with words the images I dreamed, I was feeling anticipatory and inspired.

It’s time. I hope you’ll join me as I put a book together this year. Maybe you’ll learn a bit about the process along with me? Maybe you’ll have some great suggestions and tips from your own publishing journey? Hopefully, I’ll entertain you a little.

Here’s a favorite of mine from the last album by The Civil Wars. So. Good.