When I think back to the happy times of my childhood, I remember books. I remember getting lost in a story, to the point that I couldn't hear my mom calling my name or my sister asking me to come play with her. Books truly transported me somewhere else, to Prince Edward Island at the turn of the century, to Sweet Valley, California, to the Orient Express chugging across Europe. And like many readers before me, I wanted to use my words to move and inspire people. I wanted to write.
I remember sitting at my desk, a fresh notebook open in front of me, pencil poised to record a new story. That was the best moment back then, when the possibilities were endless and all I had to do was begin. So I did. Again, and again, and again, I began to write. Sometimes I would fill a page, sometimes several. But the same thing kept happening. I didn't know what came next. I would stop and chew my lip and tap my pencil on the desk. I was great at inventing a character and setting and describing what was in my head...but then what? I couldn't come up with a plot. And because the words didn't just flow out of me (as I imagined they did for Judy Blume and Ann M. Martin and Agatha Christie), I considered myself a failure.
I never quite lost the idea that I would write something someday, that eventually it would all come together in a magical afternoon and I would finally figure out how to progress in my story, and even find the ending. But when high school came along, followed by college, the focus of my writing turned to book reports and term papers. There didn't seem to be time to imagine, to create something new, in a world that demanded I learn new information and regurgitate it for a good grade. I downgraded my goal to writing a children's book after I took a class on Children's Literature in college. It would be perfect. The books were shorter, the stories and language simpler. I could do that. Please.
Except it's not that easy, if you've ever tried it. Dr. Seuss deserves all the acclaim he gets for making stories that seem simple and singsongy...except they rhyme and draw from a pool of less than 50 words and tell a whole story in a handful of pages, with pictures to match! It all began to feel hopeless and impossible as life moved on. A title would come to me out of nowhere, and I would begin to imagine the story I could tell, but I'd dismiss it after a while as just a dream that would never materialize.
Then I became a mother. I quit my job and stayed home with my tiny bundle of love and spent hours on the couch, reading classic literature and eating dried fruit while my baby slept on my lap. And my mind began to wander in ways it couldn't while I was working or in school. An idea took root, and I took the time to let the story come to me. Finally, while the baby was asleep and my husband was at work, I snuck off with a pen and a notebook and began to write again. My first story in over a decade. There were plenty of stops, followed days or months later by starts. I didn't put pressure on the idea. I wasn't thinking about word count or whether people would want to read it. I wrote what I found inside me.
The end result was a short story entitled "In My Mother's Closet". To date, only my husband has read it. I don't know if it's any good, but it was the start I needed. After another baby, I had another idea. I sat down late at night over the course of a summer and wrote. This was it, the idea that had enough depth to become a book. I was so excited that I showed it to my husband before I even finished the first draft. I was proud and wanted the ego boost of his support. Except...he didn't really like it. He pointed out some holes in the character development and kind of shrugged over it. It was disappointing, yes, but he was right. I set it aside for about six months as we welcomed another child into the family. In the meantime, I did some research. I read some books on writing, I set a goal for myself to finish, then I pulled up the Word document and re-read it. Suddenly, the fixes became clear, the edits I needed to make in order to finish the book and present it to my husband for a second opinion.
Because the life of a mother of three young children is hectic and distracting, it took another two years to get to that finished work. (We added yet another child, a 3 year old foster daughter who left shortly after the book's completion.) But I did it, I wrote a novel called Every Little Piece! I shared it with some trusted friends, people who would be honest with me but also kind. They offered some great suggestions to make it even better.
For the past 18 months, I've been sitting on this book. I've sent queries to agents and researched the publishing industry and fretted about what to do next. Four years after I began to write it, my novel is ready for Kindle Direct and becoming an e-book. I have no idea what will come next, if anyone will read it or like it, but my childhood dream of writing a book has already come true, and now I'm ready to fulfill another goal: becoming a published author.
Friends, I hope you'll check out my book. I had fun writing it, getting to know my characters and telling their stories. But more importantly, I hope you'll think back to the thing you loved when you were young, whether it was dancing or playing outside or making jewelry out of dandelions or painting, or maybe even writing the first page of a story. And I hope that you can let go of whatever distractions or to-do lists have kept you from it. Find room for that thing to be a part of your life now, without fear or embarrassment. Return to your first love.
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| A busy life Photo credit: We Love Your Love Photography |
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