I miss Amelia or why writing is so incredibly satisfying, and why I hate to say goodbye to anyone

Yes, the time has come. I miss Amelia. I miss thinking about her, and thinking about what she might say or do. I very much miss her and all my characters. Has it only been a few weeks? Still, they were my life for so long and now they're out and about in the world. Not just those characters but literally everything I've worked on for the last three and a half years, a novella also out, an article just accepted. That's a novel, a novella, an article, all gone into my send box and sent . . . whoosh.

Here's why writing is so satisfying, at least writing something you care about. It's the one thing I do that occupies me wholly. There are other things I experience that engage me in the same way; I love conversation, or just hanging out with those I love the most; I can't get enough of travel, and I even count lying on the beach as an activity that can be as completely engaging, but writing is different. I am a relentless writer, (and for those old Firesign Theatre fans, I'm also ruthless). I used to write poetry, then stories, and then I settled on the long form. I didn't want the pleasure to end and I so didn't want it to be over. I didn't want to have to say goodbye.

Yet saying goodbye is the human condition. When I dropped my older son off at college I cried the whole way home, I knew I'd see him again, and of course I have. But I also knew that what I'd had, what I'd loved having was over. This is what it means to grow up and grow older, time passes and we change because we have to change. So onwards, whether to work on the book a little more, or to write here about how it goes when I do my best to sell it, (via an agent), and hopefully the process of beginning something new as well. Because really going back is not an option. It never is.