A new year, a new life, a new start. Years and years ago, I started a blog called The Daring Novelist. The purpose of that blog was to track a "writing dare" where I posted my writing progress every day. It blossomed into a full fledged writing blog. It kicked me into gear and kept me there for a long time.
But then Stuff Happened. I mean serious stuff. (Being a sole caregiver to a parent with Alzheimers is not ... fun.) So honestly, for me, 2020 was a recovery year. Even though it began with many Adventures In Healthcare, even before Covid started, and a large family of woodchucks showed up to eat the entire garden over and over again, I still feel stronger than I have in years.
So, though past is prologue, it is also past. Time to move forward.
I'm restarting this blog with some of the same goals as my original blog: A daily update and progress report. This time it's not about writing. For now Blogging IS Writing. And yes, writing is a part of the Wordsteading concept, so I will talk about that if and when I ever get back to that.
As I originally envisioned it, this was a kind of "lifestyle" blog for creatives who live as old time homesteaders used to live. (Not farming, or necessarily gardening at all - but an all inclusive mindset.) Gramma Lu spent her days rounding up her children, writing poetry, "canvassing" (selling door to door), as well as cooking and cleaning and canning and gardening, and wrangling her good-for-nothing husband (at least according to her.) Nothing could be defined as her "job," because EVERYTHING was her job. Even when she was a kid, and farmed out to other, wealthier families to earn her keep, she basically just joined in with that family as they all worked their butts off to make a living for themselves, and crocheting and mending and chasing chickens was as much a part of that living as anything to do with money.
You could say that, in Wordsteading, your whole life is your living.
(You're probably going to hear a lot about Gramma Lu, my great grandmother, who left behind a banker box of tightly handwritten pages of her memoirs. Almost illegible, written edge to edge. I am transcribing the dang thing. Also you'll hear about her rival, my other great grandmother, known as "Great", who didn't leave behind a written memoir, but was a larger than life legend in the family. I did a few excerpts on a blog called Clues to the Past, which I hope to revive sometime too.)
I will be writing about making that kind of living - mostly gardening and cooking, but also about entertainment that keeps the soul nourished, and pets, and Frugal Living, and yes, stories and writing. Just for now, the writing is blogging.
Next up: The Gardening Year Starts In December.
