I am a writer

I am a writer. At least that is what I tell myself. And anyone else who will listen. It’s what I have wanted to do my entire life. Well, that is a bit of an exaggeration. I have no idea what I wanted to be when I was a baby laying in my crib staring at the ceiling. But I may have wanted to be a writer even then. To be able to record my thoughts and feelings and the things that I saw. I just didn’t know about writing yet.

But I did learn. My mother taught me to read at age 3. My dad was at work and my sisters were at school. So, to fill the time and give herself something to do, she taught me to read. I learned quickly. This was great for me but created a bit of a problem when she sent me to preschool.

Preschool was essentially daycare at that time. Learning to sit still and being around other kids your age. We learned how to play nicely and be quiet when told. And there were naps. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of books. For this I had to wait until kindergarten.

Kindergarten came and there was much of the same as preschool but now we got to learn our ABCs and begin to write our names. There were also still naps. We also got books. They were small yellow paperbacks with simple words like “I see Sam. Sam I am.” We had 32 books that each parent bought to last the year. There were actually 64 books total in the series but since everyone was still learning to read, the school figured 32 was plenty. As for me, they were wrong. My parents had to special order the second half of the series because I read the first set so quickly.

First grade brought us bookworms. For each book you read you got another segment of the construction paper caterpillars that hung on the wall at the back of the classroom. Mine had to keep being raised. But we had all learned to read at this point. My best friend and I were pretty close on caterpillar length.

I progressed through grade school writing about everything. A friend moved away so I started writing letters. I had pen pals too. I even worked in the school library. Books and writing were always around me.

I told my fifth grade teacher I was going to write a book one day. She did that thing adults do where they tell you that’s nice but in a condescending manner they don’t think children will understand. I understood and I got mad. Not mad at her and I didn’t show my emotions at the time but it steeled my determination. I knew I was going to write a book.

It took several decades for me to actually do it. I had recently lost both my parents and found myself practically homebound from an illness the doctors were having trouble diagnosing. And my marriage was beginning to crumble. I needed to keep my mind off of things. I began to take pictures of my cat being her silly self. Then I realized these would make a great children’s book. I wrote, illustrated and self-published my first book!

The feeling was so great I went through my stacks of other stuff I had scribbled, written and half-finished over the years (decades to be honest). I found another project and began to pull that together into a book. I self-published that and it was well received.

I got healthy, divorced and worked through my grief and continued to write. I had finally released the writer within. I found I had ideas and stories to tell about all sorts of things so I kept writing and writing. In just five years I have written sixteen books. None of them are novels. I prefer the concise novella, children’s books and some short stories. I interact with other authors, I’ve been published in anthologies and I have my author website for credibility. I have readers around the world.

I don’t know if my fifth grade teacher is still alive or not, but I hope that if she is, she sees my name on a cover of one of my books on a mention of me in an article and knows that she is partly responsible for my success. But mostly I know I am grateful to my mother who gave me the love of the written word so many years ago.