Starting again after a seven year old

After I graduated college, I spent a year in southeastern Turkey. Van is a regional capital about equal distance from the borders of Iraq and Iran. There is a university there, a salt lake, and a special breed of cat. That's about it. So I taught my two classes each day then hunkered down in my office to write.

Reflecting on the time now, a decade later, it was much like the pandemic. I didn't see many people. I ate the same food over and over again. And I had more time for my hobbies. I left Turkey with two (not great) books but also an established writing discipline that would last a few years and several novels until we had our first child.

To paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm, "Life...gets in the way." I abandoned not one but two novels that I wrote during my wife's pregnancy. Time was budgeted between an actual job, parenting and some form of mental recovery; there was nothing left over for a writing practice.

When the pandemic arrived in 2020, like many people I had more time for hobbies. Those abandoned novels, along with reams of notebook paper plastered with fragments of new ideas, sat on my desktop once more. Now, my oldest son is seven years old and, when paired with his two brothers, can entertain himself. I have a bit extra discretionary time to write.

So after many years, I have finally hit the "publish" button on another book. But I still fear losing my writing practice again. This site is a challenge to myself to keep writing, because that's the important part: don't look back, don't edit, don't fret, just keep pressing buttons and hope they spell something entertaining.