I promise not everything in writing comes from small children, or my niece and nephew – but it does come from what you’re experiencing and what is important to you. And those two certainly top my list.

My nephew is in love with apples currently. Now don’t get me wrong, he and his sister are bananas over bananas too, but he can finally say apples. And he’s been saying it over, and over.

And over.

It’s his favorite word at the moment, and even when I’m not around them, I can’t look at an apple now without his aaaapplephrasing in my mind.

Soon, who knows what he’s going to be saying.

Writing and authors are a lot like that. You have to become obsessed and in love with your story. You have to come at your writing like it’s the greatest thing each and every time you approach it. That’s right, each and every time! No more days of dragging yourself to the screen like it’s a bowl of Brussels sprouts. You are writing my dear writers! It’s a bowl of apples that you savor!

When my nephew says aaaapple his eyes light up, his whole face smiles, and there is a sense of comprehension between him and us. I know what an apple is, and he’s known about apples for a while now. If I showed him one, asked him if he wanted it, he would nod or grin, say ‘Yeah!’ and dash over for a piece. Now, there’s a mutual level of understanding. He can say that he wants it. It’s a beautiful thing.

When a reader gets a new story in their hands, they – like dear nephew – know what they’re looking at. They know they are getting involved with another world and characters that they have yet met, or returning to them with great interest. As they read, it’s a conversation with the author, a sense of experiencing what the writer was trying to say, and finally, as they cross the final page, there’s a mutual understanding that the journey had been reached. And that’s a beautiful thing too.

Getting there, however, is tricky. Oh my gosh! It’s more like pulling weeds through concrete or sucking juice from a brick. If someone saw you doing that, well they’d think you were crazy. They would tell you to do something better with your time. Writing, well that’s a ludicrous aspiration and no one ever achieves anything meaningful from it, they would say.

But you and I, we know they’re wrong. Nay to the Nay sayers! We like our apples and we will proclaim it loudly! I love to write and if you could pry me away from the computer screen, it might actually be helpful, thank you. I’ve been meaning to get those keys off my fingers for some time now. But if you think I won’t be drawn back to its sweet nectar, HA! I’ll be in the orchards of my mind, harvesting a story for all of time, sipping on cider.