Pick up a Pen! By Holly Bush-Author of Reconstructing Jackson

Here is the guest post "Pick Up A Pen!"

I’ve been writing for about fifteen years on and off and before that I wrote a little for pleasure in high school and college when I wasn’t writing papers for classes. I’ve written some long stories, like my historical romance Reconstructing Jackson, a few essays and an occasional family story or recollection. I have found writing to be the most rewarding undertaking I have ever attempted.

I’ve talked to lots of writers over the years, some who wrote lengthy pieces and were trying to get published and many, many more that wrote memoirs or short stories and universally all have said how satisfying writing can be. There are days, quite a few sometimes, when I want to break my laptop into a million pieces when I’m in the middle of writing a novel and I just can’t see what the next scene is or I’ve been away from writing for a month or so and have trouble getting back in the mood of the book. It is a uniquely irritating dilemma when the words just won’t come. But when I’m writing short pieces, two or three pages, or when I’m really in my groove writing a longer piece or a novel and things are really working, that mojo is an unbeatable feeling.

We don’t write lengthy letters or keep diaries or journals so much anymore mostly I think because of the internet. But does a blog piece get to the real emotions that a diary entry would or recount a family meal or holiday as letter to a relative could? I don’t think so. Writing can be very personal. The intent of a blog is for the entire world to see what you’ve written, making us second guess our feelings and reactions and filter them for public consumption. Writing freely and privately can be good for us. Sometimes anger and hurt and misery can lessen as we describe whatever agony we’re in. Writing forces us to organize our thoughts as well.

If writing isn’t something you do often or at all, take a chance on it. Write about how you feel when your daughter gets on the school bus for the very first time. Describe Christmas dinner including whatever terrible vegetable Aunt Mildred brought or if Cousin Filbert had a little too much wine. Record a particularly wonderful day spent with your husband or wife or a friend. Write down what you were thinking as you stood at a graveside. Maybe a paragraph is all there is to write or maybe ten pages aren’t enough. It doesn’t matter if the grammar’s correct or if everything is spelled perfectly. You’ll know what you meant. Print out what you wrote and stick it in a file. What a treat it will be to find in a month or a year. Take a chance and write.


About the Historical Romance Reconstructing Jackson by Holly Bush:

1867 . . . Southern lawyer and Civil War veteran, Reed Jackson, returns to his family’s plantation in a wheelchair. His father deems him unfit, and deeds the Jackson holdings, including his intended bride, to a younger brother. Angry and bitter, Reed moves west to Fenton, Missouri, home to a cousin with a successful business, intending to start over.
Belle Richards, a dirt poor farm girl aching to learn how to read, cleans, cooks and holds together her family’s meager property. A violent brother and a drunken father plot to marry her off, and gain a new horse in the bargain. But Belle’s got other plans, and risks her life to reach them.
Reed is captivated by Belle from their first meeting, but wheelchair bound, is unable to protect her from violence. Bleak times will challenge Reed and Belle's courage and dreams as they forge a new beginning from the ashes of war and ignorance.

Reconstructing Jackson can be purchased at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and where ever fine books are sold.

About Holly Bush:

Holly Bush was born in western Pennsylvania to two avid readers. There was not a room in her home that did not hold a full bookcase. She worked in the hospitality industry, owning a restaurant for twenty years and recently worked as the sales and marketing director in the hospitality/tourism industry and is credited with building traffic to capacity for a local farm tour, bringing guests from twenty-two states, booked two years out. Holly has been a marketing consultant to start-up businesses and has done public speaking on the subject.
Holly has been writing all of her life and is a voracious reader of a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction, particularly political and historical works. She has written four romance novels, all set in the U.S. West in the mid 1800’s. She frequently attends writing conferences, and has always been a member of a writer’s group.
Holly is a gardener, a news junkie, and was the vice-president of her local library board for years. She loves to spend time near the ocean and is the proud mother of two daughters and the wife of a man more than a few years her junior.

You can find Holly Bush on her webpage

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