It’s been so long since I have regularly posted on this blog, that I’m not sure I have ever written about why it has taken me so long to be a published writer.
I have known I wanted to be a writer since elementary school. I can’t pinpoint the exact time or place (or book) that made me sure that was what I wanted out of life, so we’ll just say the age of ten. That’s over thirty years in the past and yet I didn’t get my first publication until two years ago, didn’t finish my first draft of my first book until this past year. Why?
The simple answer is support. Or lack thereof.
I remember having a typewriter and writing a ‘children’s book’ and getting a rejection in the mail for it when I was thirteen or fourteen. In the intervening thirty years, I didn’t submit anything else. And it wasn’t because of that rejection.
It was very simply because every time I mentioned wanting to be a writer, wanting to go to college and get an E
A few days later, I was talking to my husband and, wondering aloud, I said, “I wonder if I would have made it as an author if someone had encouraged me when I was a kid?”
nglish or journalism degree, wanting to write novels, I was told I would be wasting my time and money. “You can’t make a career of writing.” “It’s so hard to be a novelist.” “If you’re going to get an English degree, the only thing that’s useful for is teaching.” I was a child and these were adults. So I believed them. I stopped finishing stories. I stopped prio
A few weeks ago, I got my copy of the anthology I am in that comes out in September, Costs of Living from Whisper House Press. I showed it to my husband, excited, and to my kids, excited, and all of them were proud of me. My daughter (a surly, preteen who pretends to be disgusted with me most of the time) even told the friend she was chatting with on the phone.
Without missing a beat or stopping what he was doing, he said, “Of course you would have. You’d probably be famous already. Look at you now, you’ve already sold a couple of stories and you just started trying to sell them.”
I wish someonehad encouraged me then, the way he does now.
By the way, just sold another story. Details to come soon.