LONELY GIRL

How it started

In January 2023, my sister signed up for an email-based month long writing workshop that was meant to take a person from idea to finished book in 30 days. She asked me to join her in the challenge, and I said yes! Little did I realize at the time that the program, while intended for nonfiction writing, was sorely insufficient for writing memoir.

An early version of my manuscript, completed by March 2023, was a combination of self-help and memoir with the intent to show the reader how to find community in a new place and combat loneliness associate with a lack of belonging.

After hiring an editor for developmental editing of the manuscript, I confirmed my gut feelings that I should take out all the self-help advice and move the entire manuscript to memoir, my favorite genre. I became overwhelmed by the amount of writing still ahead of me and put the manuscript on the backburner through the summer.

Life shifted around me and my safety net came crumbling down when my former wife and I separated that summer and subsequently got divorced. I had to reinvent myself as a stay at home mom and felt confronted by the fact that I was writing a book about loneliness but hadn’t disclosed the loneliness I felt in my own marriage. I started to write again with a whole new fervor and mission.

Fast forward to 2025, I’d started a writing business and podcast, The Inspired Writer Collective, gotten into a new relationship, and taken the manuscript though another major (and hopefully final) shift. Now I balance the edits and rewrites necessary to complete the book with my part time school job and running the writing business. Keep coming here for updates on where I am in the publishing process.