Since I was very young all I wanted was a writer’s life, a life lived in my imagining, reading, listening to words and music, observing, remembering, telling stories, learning, teaching, and putting it all on paper. I wanted to be in this delightful space of powerful, positive, and productive work. I decided to pursue a writer’s life to sustain me both creatively and financially in 2013. In the five years since I’m succeeding in building the writer’s life I envisioned.

It is said you can never go home again. This can be translated into any kind of going or any home or any returning. It isn’t that you can’t ever go home or return to a place that holds your history, memories, and foundational connections. It’s that both you and the place will have changed in both easily perceived and imperceptible ways. I am returning to this webpage, formerly Black Magnolias, after a three-year absence. This is a terrifying return, no hyperbole. Writing, communicating, creating, connecting, and engaging on social media causes me to clean my closets, cook and bake for the freezer, repot the plants, and alphabetize the books on my shelves, almost anything, before returning to this social media home. Give me the phone, a small intimate gathering of family friends or strangers, a classroom, an auditorium, a microphone in a crowded recording booth at a radio station, anywhere else. Yet, here I am returning to this space changed, renewed, and living the writer’s life I promised myself. Here I am renewing my invitation to you to share my thoughts and imaginings, my meditations and prayers, my writing, my accomplishments and my procrastinations, yes, I’m inviting you into a writer’s life.

I am now launching A Writer’s Life Teaching and Wellness Practices in order to complete my cycle of remembering, telling, meditating, praying, recovering, healing, sharing, honing my craft, and teaching that have saved, preserved, and propelled me into joy. Launching A Writer’s Life and re–launching this website is truly scary for me, yet after each time I clean or wash or organize something and come back to these pages, fear recedes and my delight and joy at each small step and accomplishment in my own learning and healing is worthy of the fear filled journey. On these pages I will be: sharing excerpts from my writing projects-reviewing the best places for writing away from our desks-sharing writing meditations–contributing writing prompts-reviewing books–discussing authors and books that inspire and teach our craft-speaking to writer’s self-care and wellness-providing writings and supplying images of art, music, photographs, and other subjects and topics that support thinking and writing creatively and, insisting that we: think-write-revise-share–rest-care for ourselves lovingly and deeply-return to the writing-revise-revise again–publish–share even more-write even more.

Come join me and visit A Writer’s Life Blog, leave a comment, share with writer friends and like my Facebook Page. Please be on the lookout for upcoming A Writer’s Life Writing Classes and Workshops and Writing Camp.

Andrea

Website:https://andreacanaan.blog

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/AWritersLife2015/

This web page was designed and constructed by Suma Nagaraj. She was my classmate and became my beloved friend while I earned my first MFA in nonfiction at the University of San Francisco University in 2015. Suma returned to her home in Bangalore, India and this website has not been updated until now. I am forever grateful to Suma for building this social media home base for me out of love and her belief that I would return to this space an re-launch A Writer’s Life.

Promise by Amana Brembry Johnson, Sculptor

Website: http://www.amanajohnson.net