The Sun Porch

One of the few perks of being a struggling writer, unpaid and unrecognized, is the freedom to choose where you work. When my husband and I moved our young family to Spokane years ago, the dream of writing books for children stood far back on a dusty shelf in my mind.

While looking for a house, we visited one with a second story sun porch. The moment I saw it, I thought—what a perfect place for writing. My husband liked the big back yard with room for kids and a dog to run around. So we bought it. The house needed fixing-up, and the sun porch was first on the list because, for a few years, it would be a nursery.

It wasn’t until that baby was five years old that I started writing on the sun porch.

The baby is seventeen, now. Getting published has required much more learning, practice, perseverance, and time than I anticipated. If I counted up the hours I’ve spent in the sun porch and divided them by the dollars and cents I’ve earned, my income would be far in the negative.

So why do I keep writing? Because I have a dream that someday I’ll write the next Harry Potter? No. I write because most days when I go out on my sun porch and close the door, I’m happy. Some days, I’m miserable, discouraged and tormented, but most days, I’m happy. In the winter the sun streams in. In the summer, I look out at a huge one-hundred-year-old leafy-green sycamore tree. In all seasons, I write.

I love words and the challenge of choosing the right ones and putting them together in the right way to say exactly what I want to say. I love stories, I love exploring character. Through writing I discover who I am.

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