It's Really Happening

It’s never too late to achieve a dream, even if it takes decades. For nearly thirty years, I’ve been writing and trying to get a book published. The number of rejections I’ve received over the years has been extremely disheartening. It’s caused me to quit—numerous times. But the desire to write, the need to express myself, and the longing to tell a story have always brought me back to my computer. I’ve written novels and memoirs, collections of essays and middle grade books. I write whatever story—fictional or real—burns inside of me. I tell the stories I can’t keep inside and give life to characters who badger me when my mind dares to relax. 

Writing has been the one constant in my life, the one thing I can turn to regardless of my mood or the circumstances in my life. It’s cheaper than therapy, and I’d argue it’s almost as effective. It helps me make sense of the world when I’m writing fiction, and it helps me gain a deeper understanding of myself when I write essays and memoirs. Writing things down enables me to distill them, turn them around in my head, and examine them from angles I might not have noticed otherwise. It’s my favorite way to communicate because I can do it at my own pace, without fear of saying the wrong thing, as I often do when speaking verbally, and without the anxiety of feeling awkward in a crowd. I write because I feel things more passionately than most people, and it calms me more than just about anything—except, of course, a cat purring on my lap.

I write because it makes me happy, even though that happiness was often tempered by rejection, a dream of getting published that eluded me for three decades. It eludes me no more. On Wednesday, the day before my birthday, the first copies of my first published book were delivered to my house. The joy of opening those boxes was something I have not experienced since I believed in Santa and opened presents on Christmas morning back when I was a kid, back when my dad was still alive. I still miss him. I would have loved for him to have lived long enough to have witnessed my success. But this book is my memorial to him, a way to remember and encapsulate all the wonderful memories he left behind. It is the one book I never meant to write, and yet, it’s the one that landed a contract. Perhaps it’s because Dad was looking out for me from above. 

Yesterday, I celebrated my birthday. It only took me fifty-one years to achieve my dream—but I did it. I’m an author. I only hope it doesn’t take me another fifty-one years to publish a second book. I’d like to be alive to see it happen.