When I was asked to lend my words to the Arkansas Women Bloggers website as the June Blogger of the Month, I was shocked. I mean, the ARWB is chock-full of amazing women who write amazing words. And, lately, they are doing it way more often than I do. I have given myself the excuse that my personal blogs have had to take the backseat as I use up all my words on the work I do for my freelance projects.

Yes, apparently, I can run out of words. Many people would find this difficult to believe…

So, even though I accepted the challenge, I felt like a bit of a sham. Then sweet Paige of the blog Approaching Joy inspired me to give myself a break when she posted this on Facebook:

“Just a quick shout out to all the ladies out there doing good things in the world and not getting much blogging done in the process – you are still a blogger because you still understand the awesomeness that comes with sharing your story with the world… however frequently (or not) that may be.”

Just in time! What a relief! Now that that’s settled…

Like many of you, I grew up documenting my life in diaries and journals. It should have been obvious early on that I was a writer… but it somehow never occurred to me. When I was in my late 30s, I was divorced with two children and a mortgage, and needed to complete the degree I’d been chipping away at for years in order to be considered for higher-paying jobs. I asked my adviser to review my credits and tell me what degree plan I was closest to completing. Although my dream was to star in Stephen Sondheim musicals on Broadway, it was probably a good thing the answer was “English”.

For the next two years I enjoyed my creative writing classes, and was fortunate to be taught by some of the best professors in the program, but I still wasn’t thinking of writing as a career. Then, I took a class called The Art of the Personal Essay, and the world shifted on its axis.

I graduated from the UA in 2007, started my first blog, andeventually got a job at a nonprofit organization writing their weekly blog and other communication and fundraising pieces. Then, last year I started working for myself as a freelance writer.

Now that I have figured out I can make a career out of writing, I find it a little difficult to focus. I want to WRITE ALL THE WORDS!! I write two blogs, one focused on my repurposing and vintage collecting hobby, and the other… well, that’s where I write about pretty much everything else. I also write for magazines, a small community publication, and blogs that request content from the ARWB. I look forward to seeing what the next year (or ten) has in store for me, and I hope I can entertain you as you follow along. But for now, we’ll just start with June…

Here are some places to read some of my words and look at some of my photos (also, you’ll see I have two distinct personas online… just to keep things confusing interesting):

Facebook –See Laurie Write
Junque Rethunque

Twitter – @LaurieMMarshall
Junque Rethunque

Instagram – See Laurie Write
Junque Rethunque

Google+ – Laurie M. Marshall