A Fling With the Muse

A comment to my last blog entry made me realize just how long it's been since I last posted to my blog. Ironically, it's the blog's fault...my inspiration last year to edit the entries into a book awakened a long-dormant love affair with the Muse. I was a prolific freelance writer in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but that slacked off when I began my corporate job and got married. Then I started school to pursue my doctorate, went through the fun of an internship, and became addicted to Disney cruises. In view of all the other pursuits, my poor Muse went into cold storage.

Last year, I could hold it back no longer. The desire to convert the blog to a book awakened a much bigger monster for me. Editing the blog burned me out fast, so I decided to return to magazine writing as a counterpoint. I didn't have any specific goals for the year, just to start making submissions and sales again. My Muse plunged into that so strongly that there hasn't been too much left over for my poor blog.

But while I've been neglecting the chronicles of my life in Celebration, I've made quite a few sales. Most are in print form, but two of my articles (Miniature Donkeys and The Legend of the Donkey's Cross) can be found online at:

http://www.ecmagazine.net/

I've been supported in my endeavors by the Celebration Writers Group (http://celebrationwriters.blogspot.com/), a local band of writers from virtually every genre that meets bi-weekly for mutual support and encouragement. We've got quite a few people in and around town who've been bitten by the writing bug just as hard as I've been. They write everything from children's stories and poetry to opinion pieces to fan fiction.

It feels good to be immersed in the world of writing once again. I knew I would be a writer someday from the time I was old enough to know such a thing could be done as a profession. Even before that time, I would wander around the house at the age of three, making up elaborate stories in my mind about the family cat. I created and acted out scenarios with my building blocks. Finally, when I was old enough to read, a neighbor let me go through some of his old books and I found a copy of the 1963 edition of Writers Market. It was as though I had been struck by lightning! Writing could be a job, as proven by that old, dog-eared book.

In my elementary school years, my favorite "toy" was a typewriter, at which I would bang out all sorts of fanciful tales of horses and cats. Sadly, my childhood tomes didn't survive the years, but by high school I had sold my first newspaper article and I plunged into magazine writing in my 20s. I purchased a Magnovox Videowriter and named my first cat "Muse," as she'd lie on top of the printer to keep me company while I banged out my missives.

Here I am today, decades later and still as much a slave to the Muse as I was back then. I'll try not to be as negligent of my blog, and one of these days I will get back to editing it into book form. But in the meantime, I am still writing and still enjoying life in good old Celebration.


Visit my Celebration, FL website: http://www.celebrationinfo.com/

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