If I Had Known More about the Writing Process

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Jean P. Purcell

If I had known more when I began a memoir (published in 1996; "Jane Bullard" pen name), I would have tried to find a mentor. There were a few valued encouraging people in my life, and I could have asked one of them.

Yet doing that didn't enter my mind. I guess I would have needed to have had experience learning about a writer-mentor relationship to know what it could mean. So, I began trying to organize my true story, and I even went away from home for up to a week of intensive writing, although I had no idea how to handle "intensive writing."

During the writing adventure, I learned about a big change coming to my life. My husband and I would move to Geneva, Switzerland. It became a watershed time in our lives for 10 years. I loved living five minutes from my husband's office. I loved the Geneva city environment. There were no more commutes to work and separate lives, which we had for many years near Washington, DC.

That move did involve separation, however, from our two grown daughters, a son-in-law, and our first grandchild and then the second. I coped by praying a lot, visiting a local cafe every morning, and looking for ways to know other people far from home. Geneva, a center of international humanitarian affairs, had lots of country embassies, or missions, and I began to realize the similar feelings of their ambassadors and staff far from their homes, and many were much farther away than mine in the U.S.  

I had lots of time alone, and I learned to appreciate what that can mean to a writer. There was no Internet yet except e-mail for businesses and large organizations, and we knew of no cell phones that worked well internationally. In being cut off from everything familiar most of the time, I began to be a bit more expressive, emotionally, I think, in what I wrote. 

Time, being alone more than usual, and not giving up helps build writing strength, although we may not see it right away. Whether the alone time is five minutes a day or a week, or five hours, we writers need to learn to be content being alone, at least for periods of time.

Whatever you do with writing, I hope you will learn not to become obsessed with it. Once it grabs you, it tries to take over your life, especially if you're writing a book. The book will come, in my view, and be better if it evolves from as balanced and open a life as possible. 

I wish for you the time, privacy, and balance that your writing needs at this time. If you want to read more of my thoughts on writing, you can visit Author Support.  I hope you will leave a comment or two.