Good things you get from writing

If you're a writer, what do you get out of writing? Writing, publishing, and promoting has improved my life, personal and professional in many ways. Please feel free to share in the comments how writing makes your life better. Here are several good things I get from writing. 1) Keep your mind active. Unfortunately, sometimes people who don't keep their minds active, get dimensia. A family friend is one. She rambled around her alone in her house for years, as far as we could tell, doing nothing. Eventually, she couldn't remember if she ate or took her medicine. It's a real shame. It's no guarantee that writing or another way to keep your mind active will prevent this, but that's the theory and seems to work. 2) Give you something worthwhile to do with your time now. 3) Makes you smarter. Writers do a lot of research. We have to stay current with our industry. We have to promote. To be an effective writer and promoter, we have to keep learning and researching new things. 4) If published, writing earns money to help our families, perhaps even enough to make a living. I'm not yet earning enough to say goodbye to my day job, but my writing certainly helps pay for the groceries and the occasional entertainment we wouldn't have otherwise. 5) Stay on the cutting edge of technology. Writers in today's world must know how to use computers, the Internet, and promote. We learn how to make our own websites, code html, use editing software such as tracking, power point, excel, word, Twitter, Facebook, blogging, and many other computer-related programs. 6) Gives us a way to donate our work to help charitable efforts. Many authors give away free stories. Some conduct auctions and raise funds other ways with their writing. 7) Helps you to make friends - with other writers and readers. Some of my best friends are other writers. We work closely together. We commiserate about our triumphs, dreams, and woes. 8) It's fun to create new worlds and living vicariously, and so is going to writing conferences and meetings. 9) Writers can set their own schedules. Since I write as my second job, I do it evenings and weekends. I can do it when my children are asleep. I could sleep all day and write all night if I so choose. 10) Writing is portable. Writers can write anywhere in the world. And we can work with publishers and editors on the other side of the world, often with people we've never met in person. I live in Florida. One of my editors lives several states away. Our publisher lives in England. I could move anywhere in the world and not have to give up my writing job. It will travel with me wherever I go. 11) Writing makes me feel like I've accomplished something fantastic. Not just for now, but something that will stand for all time. When I am gone and buried, my stories will live on. People will still be able to enjoy them. They're my legacy to my children and their children and to all readers. 12) Writing makes the world a smaller, more intimate place. As I mentioned in number 10, I work with people around the world. I converse with friends I've made in Australia, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, England, Ohio, Indiana, etc. That's not to say writing and promotion isn't hard work. It is. Sometimes it's incredibly hard. Some edits have made me tear out my hair. Some stories have sat unfinished for a year or two until inspiration hits. But it's hard work I and many others love. We do it for the love of writing and storytelling. I feel very blessed that I am able to earn money to help my family doing something I love.

Romantic Times Convention

I'm jealous. I'm envious. And I have no right to be. This week authors and readers are going to the RT (Romantic Times Convention) and I'm not. I made the choice not to go. I think it had something to do with lack of $. It might have been also lack of vacation time and wanting to see my dad and have ear surgery so I could hear better, and also that I'm going to Lori Foster Readers and Writers Get Together in Cincinnati while I visit my dad and go to my 30th high school reunion. Guess I can't have it all. But now that the week is here and everybody's been so excited and all they can do is talk about it, and blog land (at least in writer's world) is pretty barren and deserted already and most don't leave on their planes till tomorrow, I'm wishing I'd signed up to go anyway. Like I read in Carol's blog today at TEB, I'm shy and don't do too well mingling with people I've never met before, even in blogland and cyber space, much less at all. I worry too much, too, about what people with think. Worse, my mind often goes blank when I meet someone new and I can't think of anything to say, much less something witty and eloquent. I still have no clue why the day job ever thought they wanted to put me on a telephone with donors. I did try to warn them. I guess I got over that as I did work my way up to manager, but then of course, I'm surrounded by a group of people I've known for years, some of them for ten years, that I see 5 days a week - my second family. It's even very likely, that after all this, I'll do the same thing next year - go to Lori Foster's event in Cincinnati (if it works out well this summer, that is) so I can also see my dad and my family and have my vacation from the day job do double duty. I'll probably not get to too many RT's until I can retire from the 9-5 world, in say, 15 or 20 years. I don't know whether that's a good or bad thing... To all my friends, blogging buddies, fellow authors, and readers, have a great time and bring back lots of pictures to share.