Back when I was a weird grade-schooler in a dinky inner-city school, I wrote cute little poems that my grandparents loved. Is there a grandchild’s scribble grandparents through the ages haven’t loved? (Rhetorical question #1.) Then I hit high school and created a notebook filled with angsty teenage love poems that I entered into contests. Won a few, too, and somewhere in the basement are a few tarnished vase/bowl/water dish thingys to prove it.
But at the same time, I stopped showing my “real” writing to anyone. That would be the bizarre horror short stories and the scenery-chewing D-R-A-M-A. (Teenage girl, remember? What did you think I’d be writing?) (Rhetorical question #2.) This was the “scardey-cat” factor: What if I show it to my BFF and they hate it? Or worse, laugh?
So my fiction languished in desk drawers for years. (Yes, any whippersnappers reading this post, I mean “before PCs.” Now pull up your pants and get off my lawn.) I took it with me when I went into the convent and kept it with me for the next 20 years. The “cold feet” factor, perhaps.
The stack grew, the plots and pace and storylines improving. No more blue zombies re-fleshing themselves from garden dust—the incinerator got that one years ago. No more drama-laden unrequited love stories. (You’re welcome.)
Until the day I looked at the rut I’d dug for myself: Work, cooking, laundry, cleaning, chauffeuring the kids,. Lather, rinse, repeat. Watching people act now that I didn’t have six weeks to dedicate to a community theater production. Reading books I liked rather than writing one. I’d become a bystander.
Not for long. Also known as the “in a pig’s eye” factor.
Fast-forward several years. MI just had my book launch meeting. They discussed cover designs, suggested some minor edits, confirmed the title. My book is going to be sold on the Net. In bookstores. Bought and read by total strangers. Oh, wow. Did that weird grade-schooler writing
cute poems for her grandparents ever dream of this? Maybe.
Unlike some versions of the Cinderella story, no fairy godmother dropped this in my lap. I worked my tail off for this, always hoping, always with a tiny, nagging doubt that it would happen. Yet it has.
Eep.
But at the same time, I stopped showing my “real” writing to anyone. That would be the bizarre horror short stories and the scenery-chewing D-R-A-M-A. (Teenage girl, remember? What did you think I’d be writing?) (Rhetorical question #2.) This was the “scardey-cat” factor: What if I show it to my BFF and they hate it? Or worse, laugh?
So my fiction languished in desk drawers for years. (Yes, any whippersnappers reading this post, I mean “before PCs.” Now pull up your pants and get off my lawn.) I took it with me when I went into the convent and kept it with me for the next 20 years. The “cold feet” factor, perhaps.
The stack grew, the plots and pace and storylines improving. No more blue zombies re-fleshing themselves from garden dust—the incinerator got that one years ago. No more drama-laden unrequited love stories. (You’re welcome.)
Until the day I looked at the rut I’d dug for myself: Work, cooking, laundry, cleaning, chauffeuring the kids,. Lather, rinse, repeat. Watching people act now that I didn’t have six weeks to dedicate to a community theater production. Reading books I liked rather than writing one. I’d become a bystander.
Not for long. Also known as the “in a pig’s eye” factor.
Fast-forward several years. MI just had my book launch meeting. They discussed cover designs, suggested some minor edits, confirmed the title. My book is going to be sold on the Net. In bookstores. Bought and read by total strangers. Oh, wow. Did that weird grade-schooler writing
cute poems for her grandparents ever dream of this? Maybe.Unlike some versions of the Cinderella story, no fairy godmother dropped this in my lap. I worked my tail off for this, always hoping, always with a tiny, nagging doubt that it would happen. Yet it has.
Eep.
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