Last night when I went to sleep, I had been pondering what I wanted to tell you. Something inspirational. I did not feel very inspiring. For the past two years, since I had finished my fortieth book, I had tried to write a new novel and not gotten very far.

Burnout is the popular term. I had been writing consistently since the mid-1980s, when, after selling two small human interest pieces, it seemed natural that I should write an entire novel. I was fortunate to sell the first book I ever wrote, and to continue selling each one that I wrote, until the last one, when I decided to give it up. I wondered if I might never write again.

This morning when I awoke, I had the sharp memory of something a highly successful writer of long-standing had once told me: As a part of starting each new novel, she would re-read Techniques of the Selling Writer, by Dwight V. Swain.

I took my cup of tea and plopped myself on the floor in front of my shelf of writing books. When was the last time I had cracked open any of them? I always seemed to be writing from one book to another, taking courses in writing, enjoying being the author and simply moving too fast through my life to allow myself to deeply study, and even enjoy, writing. I think my drive for writing stemmed from, as the old saying goes, wanting to have written. This drive struck at an early age and kept me writing, until the day when I no longer cared to have written.

I pulled my copy of Techniques of the Selling Writer (not well used) off the shelf. The original copyright was 1965, with a number of reprintings through 1980. From a quick check online, I discovered the book remains in print and selling today, fifty years later.

Chapter One begins with this statement: “A story is experience translated into literary process.” I recognized what I had been doing with twenty-two years of my life, and this, too, had been a drive, one that remained with me.

Further down the page is a list of eight traps to which the writer is prone. All eight have impacted me at various times. Number two on the list is the hunt for magic secrets. Perhaps there is something of a secret, though, and that is the discipline of reading writing books whenever starting to write a new novel.

I pulled another book from my shelf: Writing Novels That Sell, by Jack M. Bickham. Jack was the author of sixty-five published novels. I call him Jack, because I was fortunate enough to be one of his students. In the forward, Jack writes, “I pretty much wasted my first five apprentice years of hard, discouraging work before I found my teacher, Dwight V. Swain, and began to learn how to learn the writer’s craft.” He inscribed the book to me: “For Curtiss, who knows all this.” But I did not, and what I did know, I forgot along the bumpy way of life.

I had always had a much harder time with being a writer than with the actual writing craft. Books on the shelf call to me: If You Want to Write, by Brenda Ueland, Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande, and Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg, who reminds us that writing leads us to ultimately deal with our whole life.

Just then, there comes a call from the stairway: “Nana! I am here!”

It is my three year old grandson. A small figure comes hurling himself into my arms, and I am brought back to my particular whole life.

In the past year, my husband and I moved our household from Oklahoma to Alabama. In the process of the move, we jettisoned a lot of junk and radically changed our life style. In that moment of holding that little boy, I realized that I had somehow come full circle. I am once again a woman beginning to write in an active household—sometimes four generations fill this house—and as a mothering-grandmother to a pre-schooler.

I’ve been given a second chance in the enviable position of being older, wiser, and with more resources. Today I no longer think constantly and strive for having written. Today I am determined to give myself the gift of learning the writer’s craft and to enjoy the writing process. I am, as Jack Bickham wrote, “…dedicated to keep going, and to have faith.”

Curtiss Ann Matlock

CurtissAnn is the author of many books of fiction, including “Chin Up, Honey,” which Publishers Weekly called “a Bradburyesque vision with drugstore soda fountains, old-timey radio shows filling the airwaves and a cast of characters who wouldn’t be out of place in Lake Wobegon.” To learn more, visit her site, CurtissAnnMatlock.com.