Born to Write?

What does it mean when a woman says she was born to write? How can she be sure? I’ve felt for many years that I was destined to be a novelist, but I took my sweet time actually getting any of my fiction published. Why?

Insecurity . . . that gnawing feeling my work wasn’t good enough, or maybe I was wrong. The timing was wrong; the mood was wrong. Or maybe it was just me . . . I was ALL wrong for the “part” of novelist. Still, I wrote, even when I didn’t submit anything to anyone.

I wrote for my own enjoyment, never realizing I was my own worst critic. When, on those very few occasions, I braved it all and shared my work with others, they usually had positive feedback for me. Sometimes, they surprised me by really enjoying it, by pushing me to write more . . . by encouraging me to submit to a publisher.

And when they started talking about sending it to a publisher, I froze. I mean, I wanted to do it, but I was scared. After all, what if they were wrong? What if my work was rotten and they were only being kind? What if I was not meant to be an author, but something mundane, like a librarian? We both love the written word, after all.

Not to say I think anything is wrong with librarians; I was simply not cut out to be a librarian. My voice carries too loudly; if something strikes me as funny, I laugh. Not just a demure little twitter. No. I’m talking about a full, robust belly laugh, sometimes one that echoes off hysterically “forever”. No decent librarian would allow herself to cackle on and on, but if something is funny . . . well, I can’t help it.

When my daughter beat me to getting published I was . . . okay, I was downright jealous. Sure, she had been submitting for some time before she got that coveted contract, but how could she beat me to being published? Didn’t she know she was shaking my world to the core? Didn’t she realize how impossible it was for me to become a published novelist? Didn’t she care?

Of course, she did. And she nagged me until she got me to submit my first “real” novel to her publisher. Much to my surprise, it was accepted and I had a contract before I knew it. Huh . . . just like that? After all the initial rejection letters and the years of dreading more turn-downs? Suddenly I was going to be published.

I quickly submitted the next novel . . . and a couple of short stories. I sold the publisher on two novels in installments and my career as a fiction author was on the way. My creative writing career took off in 2007. I signed my first contract on my birthday in November.

And we all lived happily ever after. Not. By the middle of 2008, I had developed some serious doubts about my publisher, doubts that were justified by the late spring of 2009. Our publisher, however well-intentioned, was one of the myriad new publishers that spring up and quickly fall by the wayside. By July, we all knew they had succumbed and worse: they dissolved without paying their authors for the last three quarters, quarters when for many of us, our sales soared and we were expecting wonderful royalties.

So I was back to the drawing board, left wondering if I was indeed born to write. Was I only fooling myself? Could I ever expect to make a go of writing? Where would I turn? What was next?

My daughter, roommate and I are all writers, and we decided to start a small Indie company to keep our own titles “out there”, but even that was harder than any of us anticipated. We invited some of the other authors who had been marooned by our sinking publisher to join us. Little did we know how many others would submit their own beloved manuscripts to us, and how soon we would be left with no time to work on our own writing!

Was I truly born to write, or just born to publish everyone elses’ work? I guess only time will tell. I’m still trying to do both. I’m slow, but I’m thorough and methodical. I’m learning a lot in the process, and I’m just getting started.

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