Countdown

I’m excited and nervous! In 10 days my second book, “Notes from the Bottom of the World: A Life in Chile,” will be launched out into the world. The book is a collection of personal essays, exploring topics that inspired me – from Patagonian travels, to aging, to the writing craft.  I’ll be traveling to the San Francisco Bay Area with my husband to present my book at several venues: Book Passage, the Belmont and Oakland libraries.

    Sometimes in the middle of the night I ask myself: why do I want to do this – stand in front of a group or a crowd or a handful of people and bare my essays, my soul to them? What was I thinking? I calm myself by reminding myself that my deepest hope is that some can relate to what I say or have written. The hours of writing, editing, rewriting will be worth it if my words ring true for just one person.

    If I were to go back 15 years, I never imagined I’d be doing this. Yes, after I retired, I joined an English-speaking writing group and began work on my first memoir, published ten years later. Now I wonder what I’d be doing with my retirement days if I didn’t have writing. Of course, there’s reading, gardening, exercising and traveling, but writing is my creative outlet and greatest satisfaction.