Boredom and Shame: Why I Wrote a Cannabis Romance

Writing requires time. Lots and lots of time. Which is difficult to structure, I think, because we are now all unfamiliar with the benefits of boredom.

I grew up when real boredom was just a part of life. I learned to accept that there were parts of every day, and sometimes days on end, when an imagination was required to escape the tedium of daily existence. Raised well before cell phones and the internet, during the waning years of the Blue Laws in Massachusetts that prohibited most commerce on Sundays, (look it up!).

I’m part of the last generation that was raised in boredom.

That’s why I tell stories, to keep myself entertained. Also, words on the page are my way of processing life; this grand and unknowable experience of being in the world. I need to write. It’s as simple as that. The process of moving words from my body to the page is therapeutic; that’s the best way to describe my habit of sitting in the quiet and writing stories.

Although boredom isn’t something I experienced much after my children were born, the idea of being a writer never left me. But it wasn’t something I committed any time or energy towards. My children launched many years ago, but during the initial years of their independence from my care, boredom unexpectedly reappeared in my life.

Now writing has given me purpose outside the life I’ve made in my home.

I write because rather than filling my days with any of the other, infinite choices in this time when our lives are saturated with constant entertainment. I have chosen to prioritize writing because it takes me away from the chaos of the outside world that I can’t control, and allows me the freedom  to focus on one, pretty hard thing.

Like I said, it’s therapeutic.

But with the recent publication of my cannabis romance, She’s Taking a Break, I now bravely tell people I am a writer. A published author.

Why did I write a cannabis romance?

I thought it would be an accessible bridge for readers of romance to connect with cannabis.

Writing is my natural habitat, it’s what I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember. Journals, stories, letters, and such. All moving me toward writing stories, short novels at first. A way to remember things in my life by inserting and transforming reality into fiction.

I also like the process of writing stories. I’m a creator.

Of humans.

Of quilts.

Of worlds that only exist because I am in them.

I like that.

Cannabis has been an unexpected gift that has altered my world. For most of my life I thought it was a dangerous drug. It made me nervous. Although every time I used cannabis and then felt great, I also felt a bit of shame. This general sense that I was doing something wrong, that I couldn’t or shouldn’t admit I liked.

Then I had a cannabis awakening.

It was 2016, in Denver, Colorado, a place that presented a peak into the possibility that cannabis was not what I thought.

Ten years on I’ve transitioned from a skeptic to an advocate.

Why did I write a cannabis romance?

A specific combination of boredom and shame.

I believe in the power of stories to change hearts and minds, and a romance seemed like a way to normalize cannabis. A way to influence the conversation around cannabis and caregiving. A way to crush the shame.

The spark of the idea for the romance came to me one day when I was walking past a Catholic church in my neighborhood and thought about the importance of having a compassionate listener when life goes off kilter. And then I thought about a person who may not have health insurance to cover therapy but comes into a confessional as a sort of therapy alternative. That was the origin of the story. The priest, Father Zanobetti, was always centered as a compassionate listener, so in the original draft he was more present in the story. Annie spent a great deal of time in the confessional speaking to him.

But a few drafts later (there have been many, many drafts of the story), and some very good coaching from my editor, the priest character and the love interest switched roles in terms of importance to the plot. I was resistant to the change, because it required reworking the entire manuscript, but in the end, it did make the novel better.

Writing is an escape from, and a portal into, the world. From my small office on the third floor of my home, I can see the tops of trees and my neighbor’s roof, the occasional squirrel that scatters across or perches on the black slanted shingles. It isn’t much, but it calms me. Centers me into myself and then I am able to live inside my head, comfortable in the world of my imagination. A place we all lived in as children, but we seem to lose once we grow. I like to be there. It makes me happy, even on the days when the writing feels hard and the task of completion all but impossible.

Why did I write a cannabis romance?

Because I could. It’s a thing I thought I could do, and I did it.

But I’ve missed writing these past months as I’ve abandoned my solitary lifestyle required to be a writer and have focused my energy and given my time to promoting the story I’ve written.

Have you bought your copy yet of She’s Taking a Break?

I miss sitting quietly in my window seat, listening to the wind passing through the trees and the chirps and tweets of the birds lounging in the branches beyond my window.

There are so many things in this world that I definitely can’t do, and that has made me feel inadequate or even purposeless some days. Regardless, I am a writer, like others are musicians or painters, or maybe we are simply all creators. Creatives.

I’m a creator, this is what I love to do.

So, I’m setting aside time to write another book, I have a first draft and a title. And maybe I’ll have another book published same time, next year! Because now I’m a cannabis author.