Have you ever met yourself coming and going? It seems that is all I have been doing. It’s like my two identities are stuck in a revolving door.
I’ve been trying to figure out my place in this writing world, which has left me in the driver’s seat wandering around aimlessly. That’s not to say that I have been ignoring my writerly-self. I’ve just been making a lot of pit-stops along the way.
Some of those stops have been constructive. Others not so much. I guess all this confusion and aimless wandering is a consequence of my indecisiveness. If there is one thing I dislike, it’s making decisions especially when the pros and cons balance out.
When I first began writing, I had decided, without a doubt, to use a pen name. Out of that decision birthed Renee Lynn Scott. At the time, I was dipping my pen into Scottish historicals. Not because they were popular. Not because I thought I could write them better than anyone else. No, I began writing them because I have a weird kind of connection to that magical land of Celts, both Scottish and Irish alike. The fables passed down through the ages thrum through my blood. It’s a part of me. A part of who I am.
Ever since I can remember I’ve had visions of standing on the craggy cliffs as the mist from the frigid ocean bathed my cheeks, so it was quite natural for me to be drawn to Scotland.
(I’m trying to stay on track, but y’all know me. I’m the queen of rabbit trailing.)
Then one day (or I should say night), D paid me a visit. She stood on a hill with her back toward me. Her chestnut tresses whipped near horizontal with the steady gust of wind. Her ankle-length prairie skit tangled around her legs. She beckoned me. Not with her eyes, nor with her hands. No, she called out to me with her isolated silence. She asked me to write her story and to give her a happily ever after.
My dilemma? She wasn’t in Scotland. No, she stood on a hill, virtually in my backyard. A place I had sworn to never use as a setting. So, before the ink on the Scottish historical was even dry, I hopped across the ocean, navigated the Mississippi and found myself in Kansas, a place I had thought was as drab and dreary as the cracked earth in the desert.
Renee was no longer just a Scottish historical writer, she was now a Western writer.
And then, came this undeniable calling to write a Biblical Inspirational Romance (that is another story for another day).
So . . . you can see why I’ve been roaming around as if I don’t have a clue. I’ve been torn between two identities and three-four genres. The good news is for the last few months I’ve been following a map. I’ve remained focused and haven’t taken any pit-stops, which means I’m almost complete with one project, which means, hopefully, soon it will be out on submission.
Somehow I’ve got to find a way to share my time with myself. Not an easy thing to do when writing time always seems so very limited. But I’ll figure it out a way to halt the battle between my two identities and bring them into constructive working order.