Through LinkedIn, I recently made contact with a woman I “knew” years ago, in the days when I used to participate in a writers’ group on Salon.com. The moderator at that time was (and perhaps still is) Mary Elizabeth Williams. We had a number of conversations about writing mothers (as I recall): she was about to have a baby and was working on a magazine article.

I dropped her a line yesterday, and she wrote back:

Of course I remember you! You were such a huge inspiration to me when I was writing my book. I kept you in my mind as someone who had the desire to write and the DISCIPLINE to do it, every day. I wrote mine at nights while the kids slept. Somehow got it done—it just came out two weeks ago.

This comes at a time when I’m feeling quite low in the discipline department. I am reminded of myself. Somehow, all this is like an ocean—inspiration going out, and then coming back. (If I were a poet I could say this better, I know.)

Mary Elizabeth Williams’s book is Gimme Shelter, an account (in the Amazon description) “of the recent inflation of the real estate bubble and its economic—and emotional—impact on middle-class families.” A timely and important subject if ever there was one.

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Link to Gimme Shelter: http://tinyurl.com/daqaeh
Sandra Gulland’s website: http://www.sandragulland.com/
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