Sometimes when we write, …
we’re really writing for someone else.
Authors write for ourselves, too, otherwise:
Why do it?
Now, I am grateful to add poet with my author achievements because two of my poems will be published later this year.
My therapist asked me what she thought was a strange question:
“Can I have a copy of your Corrie novel?”
She explained to me how so many experience grief look for something to read besides the “5 Stages of Grief.”
Why do we write whether in journals or in publications?
My adult journey in writing spans fifteen years now compared with everything I wrote from ages 7 to 19. I dreamed one night about my grandfather, and I spent seven and a half years writing a YA fiction novel inspired by him.
It was a way for me to give him some type of immortality. To me, there was no one like the man who in his childhood died a rooster a different color, so the hens would like him.
I adore how he saw something in me and would say: “That girl is going places.”
For different reasons, the novel sat for a while. I wanted to write about injustice and unfair the world was in regards to race and different cultures. In January 2020, I came up with a new way with an alt history/ Dystopian world.
I have kept most of it to my family and myself, but Corrie was a huge fan. She asked me to read different parts to her, and she adored my protagonist, Sadie.
When Corrie died, I stopped writing it. Fifteen chapters in, I wondered how I could ever pick it up again. My husband, John, told me I would.
In October, I started editing and writing it again because I know how much Corrie loved the book I now call Rise of the Rinsed.
My Corrie novel is a poetry collection called When We Danced in the Rain forever inspired by the fact my baby girl would insist on watering her paternal grandmother’s plants just after the rain. It is inspired by how she had insisted on wearing rainboots at the beach instead on sandals.
I started writing the poems in the collection out of an absolute need to keep my daughter alive, to deal with the joy, grief, and my guilt.
In speaking with my therapist and others, I realized how many others need When We Danced in the Rain. I have now submitted it to different contests and publishers with the hope someone will see not only the quality of the writing, but something others are searching for.
In grief, some of us toss the umbrella aside, and run, scream, or
dance in the rain.
Corrie's Season 