{"id":290,"date":"2011-11-01T15:45:24","date_gmt":"2011-11-01T18:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andromeda.qc.ca\/guthrie\/?p=290"},"modified":"2011-11-01T15:45:24","modified_gmt":"2011-11-01T18:45:24","slug":"why-we-write","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/andromeda.qc.ca\/guthrie\/?p=290","title":{"rendered":"Why We Write"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had actually forgotten about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogher.com\/nablopomo-november-2011-blogroll?from=bhspinner\">NaBloPoMo<\/a> until I read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snerkology.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/here-we-go-yo\/\">Tiffany&#8217;s latest entry<\/a>, and I thought about how I don&#8217;t write here often enough, and this might just make me get back into the groove.  I&#8217;ve often participated in things like this for that very purpose, and it usually doesn&#8217;t work, but what the hell.<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s prompt is to describe what you love most about writing.<\/p>\n<p>I discovered two things about myself at the age of nine that became very important &#8211; namely, that I love to read and I love to write.  This was when I was in grade 3, and Ms. Nurse, our English teacher, read to us books such as &#8220;Charlotte&#8217;s Web&#8221; and &#8220;The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe&#8221; (or was the latter read to us in grade 4? We had Ms. Nurse for both years, so I get it mixed up, but it doesn&#8217;t really matter).  She also had us write stories in these small composition books that had a large block of space above each lined section for drawings.  I sucked at the drawing part, something that continued through the ensuing years, but I found that I absolutely loved coming up with stories.  I even incorporated chapters, complete with cliffhanger endings.  <\/p>\n<p>I enjoy writing here, but my true love of writing is in the form of fiction.  And what I love most about writing is the same thing that I love about reading &#8211; the ability to lose myself in a story.  Even when your life is fantastic, you need to have some form of escape, whether that come about in the form of a good book you&#8217;re reading, or a writing project you&#8217;ve started, or a favourite television show, or even going for a walk in the woods.  I consider myself fortunate that I can find such escape in all of those ways.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have the same time to write as I used to, and in some ways, that makes me sad.  But the reasons I don&#8217;t have much time for it are all good.  I&#8217;m married to a wonderful man and we have a beautiful daughter I absolutely adore, so of course I want to spend time with them.  Writing is a loner activity, so it gets pushed to the back burner.  Sometimes I thought that I should just give up on writing because I kept thinking about how a common piece of advice to writers is to <i>write everyday<\/i>, and it just wasn&#8217;t happening for me anymore.  I realized that I can&#8217;t give up on writing, because it&#8217;s just part of who I am, and I have decided to let go of that piece of advice.  I try to write as much as possible, but when it doesn&#8217;t happen, it doesn&#8217;t happen.  I&#8217;m working on a project now, and I try to work on it whenever Claire has a nap.  But there is no deadline; if it takes me ten years to write it, then so be it.  What matters most is that I continue to love it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had actually forgotten about NaBloPoMo until I read Tiffany&#8217;s latest entry, and I thought about how I don&#8217;t write here often enough, and this might just make me get back into the groove. I&#8217;ve often participated in things like &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/andromeda.qc.ca\/guthrie\/?p=290\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nablopomo","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/andromeda.qc.ca\/guthrie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/andromeda.qc.ca\/guthrie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/andromeda.qc.ca\/guthrie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/andromeda.qc.ca\/guthrie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/andromeda.qc.ca\/guthrie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/andromeda.qc.ca\/guthrie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":293,"href":"http:\/\/andromeda.qc.ca\/guthrie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions\/293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/andromeda.qc.ca\/guthrie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/andromeda.qc.ca\/guthrie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/andromeda.qc.ca\/guthrie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}