{"id":803,"date":"2016-04-18T12:59:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T12:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5379.temp.domains\/~pjmaclay\/giving-up-writingopen-book-blog-hop\/"},"modified":"2019-03-26T02:18:28","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T02:18:28","slug":"giving-up-writingopen-book-blog-hop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/?p=803","title":{"rendered":"Giving Up Writing\u2014Open Book Blog Hop"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n<\/a><\/div>\n

I don’t know that I ever truly thought about giving up writing, but there was a time frame when writing gave up on me.<\/p>\n

As many of you know, my first love in writing was poetry. Although I never considered myself great, I did feel some of what I wrote was pretty darn good. Good enough that I’ve been published in literary magazines in both the U.S. and Canada, and won a few small awards.<\/p>\n

For a long time, I couldn’t imagine ever not<\/i> writing poetry. Snatches of poems came to me easily, and although they all didn’t get developed into a full-fledged poems, it was enough for me to develop the habit of always keeping a notepad and pen handy so I wouldn’t lose the bits and pieces. One of the first things I did when we bought a new truck was put a clipboard and tablet under the front seat so paper would always be handy. I have binders and boxes filled with my poems.<\/p>\n

\n<\/a><\/div>\n

But somewhere along the way, and I can’t pinpoint the exact time, my muse left me. My scratchpads remained empty and the words disappeared. I believe it was partly tied to changes in my career, which demanded very logical thinking. The more time I spent focusing on my job and training to move to the job I wanted, the less time and energy I had for creative thinking. I might have written one poem every six months or so and I felt as if I’d never recapture the writing spark.<\/p>\n

I’d lost an important part of who I was.<\/p>\n

Three things happened in close proximity that changed that.<\/p>\n

First, I was passed by when an opening came up for the job I wanted. Twice. I had a choice to make. Either stay with my current employer and pursue a different segment of the field or go elsewhere. I chose to stay, which ultimately turned out to be a good decision. It also opened up some spare time for me.<\/p>\n

Second, I heard about NaNo. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s National Novel Writing Month. That’s right, it’s a challenge to write 50,000 words or more during the month of November, basically an entire novel. The concept intrigued me.<\/p>\n

\n<\/a><\/div>\n

\nThird, I ran across some fan fiction in an old forum that drew my interest. I tracked down an entire story from old posts that spanned several years. It sparked the desire to try writing a book myself. So November rolled around and I did. Try, that is. I wrote 49,000 words and ran out of story and time. But I didn’t give up. I rewrote that book and expanded it so it was over 50,000 words. And by the time I was done with it, another story waited for me. (Which was good, because the first one wasn’t very good.) And I haven’t stopped writing since.<\/p>\n

You can find links to my books HERE<\/a>  (Oh come on, you didn’t think I wouldn’t sneak in a promo?)<\/p>\n

\n<\/a><\/div>\n

So my muse really wasn’t gone. It was just transforming. I’ve now published four books and am working on the fifth. And a sixth is rolling around in my head. Now I have more story than I have time.<\/p>\n

To find out what our other authors have to say, follow the thinks below.<\/p>\n

“April 18, 2016 – Write about the time you almost gave up writing for good
\nRules:
\n1. Link your blog to this hop.
\n2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
\n3. Promise to visit\/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
\n4. Tweet\/or share each person’s blog post. Use ?#?OpenBook? when tweeting.
\n5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.
\nWordpress:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Custom Blog:<\/p>\n

\nAn InLinkz Link-up<\/a><\/div>\n

Code for Link:<\/p>\n

get the InLinkz code<\/a>
\n“<\/p>\n

\n#OpenBook #Writing<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t know that I ever truly thought about giving up writing, but there was a time frame when writing gave up on me. As many of you know, my first love in writing was poetry. Although I never considered myself great, I did feel some of what I wrote… Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJdTo-cX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1483,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions\/1483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjmaclayne.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}