A few months ago, I was browsing through a bookstore in Myrtle Beach and came across a book entitled A Broom of One’s Own. Written by Nancy Peacock, the book promised “inspiration to talented and struggling writers everyone.” I didn’t know about the talented part, but I was extremely familiar with the struggling aspect.  I flipped the book over to read the back cover, and when I saw it described as “one of the most original and valuable books about writing ever published,” I knew it was the book for me.

For the next couple of days, I pored over Peacock’s advice, anecdotes, and words of wisdom as I sat on the strand enjoying the sun and surf. The perfect length and tone for a beach book, I LOVED reading it and underlined several pithy lines. The fact that the author was also a housecleaner added both fun and realistic elements to her work. I could see that although she was a published writer (and a darned good one) whose work had won awards, she was also a person with a life. She was a person grounded in reality who had struggles like everyone else, including yours truly. I even have my own broom!

I didn’t mean for this to turn into a book review. I just wanted to relate how I got the title for this new blog. I got it from Chapter Three of Nancy Peacock’s book. In this chapter entitled “Bedside Story,” the author says she thinks there are two things writers love more than anything else. “One is solitude and the other is gossip.”

I think Nancy Peacock is on to something. Writing is a solitary undertaking. A writer needs plenty of alone time to reflect and ponder and think, activities that sound the same but that are a wee bit different from each other. She also needs to be able to let her mind wander down Memory Lane in hopes of remembering just the right recollection that will make everything gel. At the same time, writers would be dull folks indeed if they never got out of their little private zones to engage in “real life” with other people, something often referred to as “filling the well.”

In this new blog, I’ll be writing about some of the challenges, tips, successes, failures, setbacks, frustrations, joys, and issues of a writer’s life, including the secret for finding that perfect balance between gossip and solitude. I’ll also be sharing some original work, mine and others’. I might even throw in a book review from time to time.

For now, I need to creep back downstairs and prepare for the day, a busy one that promises many opportunities to replenish the well.