My Dream: The Beginning

I'm not sure why, but I always loved writing stories.  Every time my mother would go to the drug store I would ask her to pick me up a notebook and I would fill them with stories.  Years ago, after my mom's stroke, my dad came across some of those notebooks that my mother had kept.  These stories make me shake my head and laugh.  The handwriting, the grammar, the spelling … the cheesy stories.  Ha!  When I had to write for school my teachers LOVED my writings.  We were assigned to write a rough draft and after the teacher did the editing we had to write it neatly with corrections on the final copy.  My teachers would always tell me my stories were great and needed no changes, only to be written neater on the final copy.  I'm not so sure my mom saved any of those.

As a child, writing was a way for me to escape the reality that was my life and those are experiences I rarely share with anyone.

"The family never had any arguments.  Courtney and Deb always got away with everything."  Yeah, definitely NOT my life!  I'm not sure who Courtney is but I do have a sister named Deb.  Oohhhh, and my drawings WHAT THE HECK?  It's clear why I never became an illustrator.  

Eventually, I stopped adding art to my stories.  Thankfully.  I'm not sure how old I was when I wrote these stories since the notebooks had no dates.  

I'm feeling embarrassed by sharing these but I was probably around 10 to 12 years old.  

In high school I was part of the literary magazine's club and had a few short stories and poems published.  In 12th grade I was on the high school newspaper.  I'm not sure where any of that work went.  Of course, Mom, let's not save the good stuff.  

I started college as a journalism major, and I think I shared bits and pieces on here as to why that didn't work out.  I love writing but decided against being a journalist.  Being a print journalist would mean working with deadlines and writing controversial topics that I'm just not into.  Sure, I'd be writing and earning an income, but it wasn't what I wanted.  Writing was always therapeutic and enjoyable for me.  A career as a journalist would take the fun out of it.  I had always wanted my life and my writing to be separate.  Many of my writings are personal and kept tucked away somewhere.  No one reads them.  

A few years ago my husband and I worked on a book together for fun.  He did the illustrating and yes, he's an amazing artist.  I wrote the story.  It was intended only to be a Christmas gift for my parents and it's written as a children's book about two of their former Boston Terriers Rocky and Barney.  They were from the same litter, were polar opposites in personality, and were very comedic.  Their deaths were hard for all of us.  This book brought out those personalities in a fun way.  I had so much fun writing this book and would love to have made a series out of it, with the intent on getting these traditionally published but my husband wasn't into the idea.  Drawing these pictures took a lot of time and work and he didn't seem interested in it.  

My parents loved it and they ordered more copies to give to family members.  It was pretty cool to see my name and writing in print this way and allowed that desire of becoming a writer to flow through me even more.  

I want to be a published author.  That's a dream I've had for as long as I can remember.  My desire is to write books that glorify God, and doing so by writing inspirational fiction for the young adult audience.  Can I do it?  I don't even know if it will be possible for me but, Lord willing, I'll get there.