I have always wanted to be a writer. Ever since grade school when I began to learn not only to read and write letters, but to put words together into actual sentences. I believe it was around third grade I began developing a space voyage story that I wanted to write. The summer between third and fourth grade I “moved” into the RV that my parents owned and was parked in front of the house so that I could be a “real author.” And Strawberry Shortcake spiral notebook in hand, I sat at the living room table, my “writing table,” for hours, writing about adventures on far off planets and on large space-going vessels. I never did finish the novel that summer or since, though the story is still percolating in the back of my brain and possibly maturing some. But that summer was one of the happiest times of my life. I was doing what I loved.
Fast forward several years. Through the rest of grade school, I never had any teachers encourage me to write. I did make mostly A’s and B’s (the one C was in writing, and that was because I did my homework on the dirt road riding a school bus, not the easiest way to earn good grades in an eloquent script, I assure you).
Around 6th grade there was actually a writing contest. The teacher encouraged the class to enter. The subject was a Trip to Mars. Ever the studious scholar, I did my research first. I didn’t even realize at the time that this is what a good author does prior to or during their writing on a particular subject. RESEARCH. Being a pre-google/pre-internet epoch (yes, dinosaurs roamed outside my window), I cracked open the encyclopedia and read about Mars and about space travel (hey, cross-referencing even!), and decided I would write about how I was trained and prepared by NASA to travel to Mars. I wrote the story and gave it to my teacher who sent it in. I got first place. I to this day have no idea if that was first place in the school, first place in the county, or first place on the planet. At the time I didn’t care. I had enjoyed the process and basked in the results. I even enjoyed the notoriety of having my picture and name (misspelled of course) in the local paper. You would thing with a four letter last name that people could spell it correctly. But they do not. And even with this success, no one said to me, you should be a writer.
In high school the same thing went. I was very busy trying to build my college bound resume by joining various clubs and studying hard for those A’s and B’s. I generally got a “Good!” on papers, but never a < wow, this is so good, you should consider a MFA and writing career. So I continued in my studies aiming to focus on science and math. I thought maybe I would be an astronaut, a doctor, or an archaeologist, having wide and varied interests.
College was even busier. I had the usual college stress, compounded with a first ever boyfriend and having caught mono, was fighting extreme weariness and illness. Several majors later I settled on a BS in biology and generally did well on my scientific papers. Yet again, no teacher said, Gee, you write so well, you should be published. I even signed up for a Creative Writing Class, and possibly if I had remained in the class, I would have had some encouragement there. But alas, with 19 hours of science courses as well as another 4 hour off-campus college course in Chemistry, I had to drop the one “fun” class I had signed up for and focus on my major.
At this point life got even crazier. My third “boyfriend” asked me to marry him. So in one summer, I graduated undergrad, got married, moved into boyfriend-no-husbands house, got my driver’s license, and entered grad school. There was barely enough time to keep my head above water, much less to write. Again I pushed all the creative ideas down, stifling them with my pat reply that when I retire...
Fast forward again. A lot of stress happened. A divorce, an extended illness of a parent and then the loss of that parent, a new relationship, a new marriage, a spouse with cancer, a new job. All the while, I would get ideas and write them on scraps of paper, or buy endless quantities of office supplies. I thought, well, I’ll just jot this down and then in twenty or thirty years when I retire, I’ll get back to this.
My dear husband started encouraging me. I mentioned someday I’d like to write. He said, just do it. And several friends mentioned, you know, your emails are so funny. You should be a writer. I finally finished a second masters, an MLS, and thought no more school. But I don’t want to stop learning. That is about the time my library where I work started offering free online courses. I thought, why don’t I take a few on writing, just so when I do retire (in twenty or thirty years), I can just hit the ground running. Why not? They’re free. And only taking one or two courses at a time won’t mean I have no free time left. It’s not like signing up for a full semester of college. So that’s what I did.
One of the classes was a “Writing for Magazine Publishing.” I was enjoying the class and doing the homework. A friend invited me to go to the library where I would not only hear her speak but meet and shake hands with one of my favorite authors, Jan Karon. Imagine, me, meeting THE JAN KARON! I was thrilled.
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| I am shaking hands with THE Jan Karon!!! I felt so tall next to her petite self! |
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| Jan Karon, speaking to the group prior to one on one. |
After she spoke we broke into groups and then got at most 2 minutes each with her. She would let you take your picture with her. So my friend agreed to take mine. When it was my turn, I thanked her so much for what she said in her talk. She said she had started writing when she was 50 years old. It gave me hope (as I was now in my 40s) that I might not be too late to start writing. She said, “Just do it!” And maybe she says that to everyone who thanks her for that encouragement but I felt like she really meant it. Later in the week when I was working in my online class, one of our final assignments was to write an article for a magazine of our choice, and then actually submit it! So, remembering Jan’s words, I did it. I wrote an article or true life story and submitted it to one of my favorite magazines, Guidepost, a national Christian magazine. I thought, well, at least I’ll get my first official rejection letter. But you gotta start somewhere, right?
This was in October. The story I sent was a Christmas story. Online it said, if you do not hear from the in six months, assume it is a rejection. So that came and went, and I thought no more about it. In May the following year, husband and I were headed to the tax office (hubby ran a business so we had taxes year-round, not just in April). My cell phone rang and I never answer it if I do not know the number. It was a New York number. I know of no one in New York, so I let it ring. If it is important, they’ll leave a voicemail. Several minutes into our meeting, I got the ding sound that meant someone had, in fact, left a voicemail. So I excused myself (hubby could take care of taxes, I was just there to add eyes-glazed support, as I always do when it comes to taxes). I listened to the voice mail and it was a lady from Guideposts magazine she said and they were interested in publishing my story about the Christmas Stocking. I wanted to simultaneously scream and pass out from shock. What? Where was the rejection letter I was expecting? I was beyond elated. People talk about Cloud 9, but I was seriously beyond clouds unless you were talking about nebulas, then maybe that’s where I could be found at this time.
They phoned and emailed back and forth with me, editing and then getting my approval on the edits. They even sent a photographer out to my house, which really put me in stardom mode. Wow, a photographer? Where’s my paparazzi? No autographs, please? Who am I kidding? If you had asked me for one, I would have been happy to autograph anything. I’m not famous yet, but I did have an inkling of what it might feel like. I also now had finally the encouragement that maybe writing was my thing. If a national magazine thought I had talent, then maybe I did. I decided now was the time.
I searched online and found two local writing groups. At this time, our finances were still struggling from my husband’s cancer fight and subsequent job losses and so forth. So the one said it was free, but after emailing them, I did not hear back for many months. The other one had a meeting coming up. So I thought, why not. I’ll go and hopefully we can afford the $30 membership fee. I joined that Saturday and discovered they had a contest coming up. There was a photograph prompt and we were to write a short story based on the prompt. So I did. And I won second place. All winners were going to be published in an anthology the group produces every year. So in the span of five months, I was being published twice.
Needless to say, I began writing in earnest. Instead of reading fun sci-fi novels or Christian romance novels, I started checking out writing books from the library. Instead of spending weekends with friends, I began to clear off my desk and started writing more and entering more contests. That November I joined Nanowrimo and for the first time I wrote a 50,000 novel that had a beginning, middle, and end. And probably a whole slew of misspells and verb tense agreements and plot holes and maybe even some flat characters, but I did it. After trying to write a novel in 3rd grade and never finishing, it gave me great comfort to see that I could actually do it. It wasn’t some inner flaw that I was doomed to never finish any novels I started.
Yes, I still have a lot to learn and a long way to go. But the best way to get there is to just do it. Write. Read. Join a writing or critique group (or both). Write down those random thoughts or ideas instead of stifling them or mashing them down to look at later, in twenty or thirty years. Because life is short and who knows. Maybe you won’t live another twenty or thirty years. Then you have wasted that precious gift God gave you, that incredible imagination, that observant mind, that quick wit, that love of words. Experience the joy of just writing. Even if it is just for you. Even if it never gets published or sees the light of day. Just write. And even if you don’t enter any contests, if you follow your heart, you will be the ultimate winner.
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