You GUYS! I died and went to writing heaven Monday night.

I wrote a listicle {article + list} for the Writing With Ink & Grace blog!

It’s live.

Right now.

Let me back up.

I met Ashly Hilst on Instagram via a survey she was doing about the writing life and writing struggles. I responded to it and we bonded over writing, favorite books, and Dungeons and Dragons. We’ve kept up through emails and Instagram over the past year.

Almost two months ago, Ashly DMed me on Instagram asking me if I wanted to write a listicle for her blog.

#duh

(I was way more professional than that when I accepted her offer.)

I emailed it to her Monday morning. (Yes, I know, “almost two months ago” was mid-March.) Complete with bio, headshot (thanks to the wonderfully talented Albert Krabbe of Studio Twenty Photography), and social media handles. It was weird and I felt like a professional writing about myself in the third person. It was also way cool.

When I arrived home Monday after work, I had an email from Ashly saying she loved it and that it would be going live this Wednesday morning at 6:30ish a.m. (That’s TODAY. Right. Now.)

I teared up when I read the email. I cried when I saw the graphics Ashly made for the article. (It’s been an emotional, faith-stabilizing couple of weeks in the Erler household. Bear with me.) They’re beautiful! My words, my name, the title even–they all look so professional.

So, without further ado, I give you my first every guest post:

“I am not about to win any awards for being the best self-starter and writing the most books in a year. I thrive in a classroom setting, with due dates and a final grade at the end of the semester to keep me moving forward. Writing is not one of those pursuits that so neatly fits in a classroom setting, especially if you’re DIYing your Writing Life and not going to school for it. While this is a drawback for my personality, this is also part of the appeal: we can write anywhere. But, the discipline of writing is the hard part. I have to beg, borrow, and barter to get myself to write. Some evenings I side-eye the dirty dishes in the sink the entire time, but there are times writing wins in the end. Here are my best writing tools: . . .”

Read about each tool over on the Ink & Grace blog!