Hello <<First Name>>,

Did you hear the joke about the writer and the timeline?

No? Me either. I think I'm in the midst of writing it. I wrote this piece about writing too (it was just published in The Writer's Guild on Medium) if you'd like to check it out. 

The most amazing thing happened with the book I'm writing. I wrote 90,000 words! That's the average length of a novel. I originally thought that when I hit 90,000 words, I would type "The End", pop open some champagne, and kick up my feet. The oops factor is that I wrote those 90,000 words, but I didn't get to the end of the story yet. I also realized that I don't like 10,000 of the words, so those are gonna need to come out. I'm definitely in a new kind of flow and zone. I'm so locked in with my characters that I started searching on Zillow to find one of them a new apartment. Her commute is really bugging her. And she needs better storage. 
 
Originally, I thought I'd be passing out copies of my novel to my Beta Readers for some summer reading. Now it looks like that's gonna be a little delayed. Maybe I need to just stick to the day-to-day planning of word count and listening to (and transcribing) the stories as they unfold. I know where I think the story is going to end - it's just that it seems to be taking some interesting turns in getting there. And then there's that whole life thing that happens in the midst of all this writing too.

I always admire women who are accomplished in their field and when they are interviewed by reporters they are able to say snarky and intelligent things like "Why don't you ask a man who takes care of his kids while he works on his career? Why only ask women?" They are so right. But if someone asked me that question, I'd actually answer it. I have a lot to say on the matter of finding headspace to be creative, professionally engaged, and balancing a happy, healthy, loving, and connected family.  I don't find that easy, but being honest and open about the process seems to help.  At least for me anyway. Would love to hear from you and what you think as well. 

Looking for some of the 'good old funny stuff'? Read more on my website at: 
https://yesitreallyhappened.com
Want an inside peek on the writing process? Check out the newest piece published on Medium. 

And, as always, thanks for reading! 
Onwards!

Colleen

P.S. There's a very real possibility this email was addressed "Dear [Test First Name].  While I love to write, I don't love figuring out how to mail merge, mail chimp, mass market, promote myself on social media (especially twitter), and I still haven't figured out how to use instagram to promote writing. And since I don't want to send out photos of what I ate for breakfast, we're just gonna leave that alone. Thanks for your patience with my explorations into all of it. I'm a work in progress.