Wren Ashby

For a long time, I didn’t write.

Well, that’s not exactly true because I write all the damn time. Emails, captions, blog posts, stuff for work. If someone is waiting on me to finish something, chances are I’m writing it.

But stories? Nope.

I wasn’t lying in bed thinking about characters who didn’t exist. I wasn’t coming up with completely unhinged plot twists while driving down the road and grabbing my phone to record them before they disappeared from my brain.

That part of me had gotten pretty quiet, and the weird thing is, I don’t really know when it happened.

I never decided to stop writing. Life just got busy.

And honestly? Life got really good.

I fell in love. I got married. My husband and I are coming up on four years of living together and three years of marriage, and I think for a while I was just really happy being there. I wanted to enjoy the life we were building instead of constantly disappearing into one I made up.

I love our routines. I love our weekends. I love our stupid inside jokes that nobody else would understand. I love our home. I love being his wife.

Actually, I’m probably more obsessed with that man now than I was when I married him, which seems mildly unfair to everyone who has to listen to me talk about him.

Sorry, not sorry. 😂

Somewhere in all of that, though, writing slipped into the background.

Apparently it was just taking a nap because lately that bitch will NOT shut up.

Suddenly everything is a story again.

Someone says something completely normal and my brain goes, Well, that sounds like something a murderer would say.

I’ll be sitting in a parking lot putting something in my Notes app because some fictional woman and her terrible marriage have suddenly become an emergency.

And God help me if I’m trying to fall asleep when an idea shows up.

But here’s the really surprising part.

I’m actually finishing things now.

Coming up with ideas has never been my problem. I can come up with book ideas all damn day. Actually sitting down, following one all the way through and typing THE END? Different story.

Except now I’ve done it.

I’ve finished manuscripts. I’ve sent query letters, which is its own special form of emotional torture. I’ve started letting other people read my fiction instead of keeping it safely tucked away on my computer where nobody can reject it.

Of course, nobody can love it there either.

That one took me a while to figure out.

And lately I’ve been wondering why writing came roaring back now.

I think part of the answer might be my husband.

I KNOW.

That sounds dangerously close to one of those a man helped me find myself things, but stay with me because that’s not what I mean. 😂

Writing was mine long before John came along. He didn’t give it to me. He didn’t turn me into a writer.

But I do think being loved the way he loves me gave me room to start chasing this again.

He has never treated my writing like some cute little hobby I’m eventually going to get bored with. He doesn’t ask what the point is if I haven’t sold a book yet. He listens when I talk about imaginary people like they’re actual people and somehow doesn’t question the fact that I spend months creating these poor bastards, destroying their lives and then stressing MYSELF out about how I’m going to fix everything.

Sir, I created the problem. I know.

But when something matters to me, it matters to him because it matters to me.

That’s a pretty damn wonderful feeling.

Maybe that’s part of what I got wrong about creativity for a long time.

We hear so much about people creating amazing things during terrible periods of their lives. Broken hearts. Bad relationships. Trauma. Writers drinking whiskey alone in dark rooms and turning all that pain into something beautiful.

But why can’t good things create something too?

Why do I have to be miserable to have something worth writing about?

Because I am definitely not miserable.

I freaking love my life.

I’m ridiculously happy in my marriage and apparently one of my favorite things to write about is women in absolutely horrific marriages. Make that make sense. 😂

I can spend Saturday watching Alabama football and yelling at the TV like the coaching staff has requested my personal consultation, then pour a bourbon and open my laptop because someone in my imaginary world needs to disappear.

This is apparently who I am now.

And I like her.

For a while I thought getting my writing spark back meant somehow becoming the woman I was before.

But I don’t want to go backward.

That woman hadn’t met my husband yet. She hadn’t built this life. She hadn’t had all the conversations and experiences and random moments that now end up getting filed away somewhere in my brain.

That’s another weird thing about writing. You collect shit without realizing you’re collecting it.

A conversation. A place. Something someone said at dinner. The way somebody acted when they were obviously lying. Some weird little interaction you witnessed three years ago that suddenly shows up in a book.

Nothing is safe anymore. 😂

So maybe I didn’t find my way back to the woman who used to write.

Maybe this is just the next version of her.

She’s older. She knows herself better. She’s got a hell of a lot more material now.

And apparently she’s finally brave enough to finish the damn book.

Whatever happened to her for those few quiet years, she’s back.

And she is loud as hell.

Damn, I missed her.

~Wren