“Your writing will change,” said a woman at a book signing, as she eyed my pregnant belly. I didn’t believe her.

What do you mean it will change? I’ll still be the same person when this baby comes out. I’m not losing brain cells. I’ll still write. I have to. I’ve always written. How can the words inside me change?

Well, here I am a year later, and I can tell you, my writing has changed. I wish I had asked the woman more about what she meant, or at least how she knew that. Was it from personal experience? Did she have a favorite author she followed before and after children? At first, my change started as pure lack of time and post-partum sleep deprived “mom brain”. That I expected. As the fog began to clear though, I’ve started to realize what that woman meant. 

When I write, I get pretty deep into the flow, a place where the words just come to me, almost like I’m watching a movie that no one else has ever seen before. There are some pretty tough scenes in my Swords of Resilience series, and though I researched carefully, when it came time to write them they rolled out of me. Post-baby, I will admit I have hit the delete key on entire sections, unable to read what I wrote just months ago. Anything with kids or childbirth is a weird no-go zone right now. Could I have written some of the scenes that are in the trilogy now? I’m really not sure. I try to write everything with respect, but some things are raw. And my reading has gone down the same path. I can read a war novel where bodies are getting blasted apart, but throw in a midwife and a difficult labor and I can’t even finish the book. It’s a weird place to be.

I’ve spent the summer navigating this new writing hurdle completing, of all things, a novel about a pregnant woman. I took some scissors to some scenes, and others are now far richer than I could have imagined, now that I’ve gotten to experience that crazy love of a mom. The writing and editing are all tied up. I’m working out some kinks in the blurb so my cover designer can do her end of things. Then I guess (do I, really? Yes, I think so…) I’ll have to let you all read it. Then you’ll have to tell me if that woman was right. Has my writing changed?