I have always known since I was a little girl that I wanted to write. I took every opportunity to write outside of school. Sometimes it would be a journal entry. Sometimes it was a letter to the electric company on behalf of my immigrant parents. Sometimes it was an attempt to write a story. Other times it was just to share with the world what was going on in my head and in my heart, knowing that the world was never actually going to read it. I always wrote the truth. The pen and paper were my best friends. I usually felt a lot better after writing.
I was somewhat still on track for a future in writing during high school, even if I was attending a science and math magnet high school. It was an honor to be accepted into this selective program. I had taken an entrance examination and my parents and I had prayed for the opportunity to go there. And it worked. I got in. I happily attended Experimental Physics, Mechanical Drawing and Calculus classes along with Literature and Creative Writing classes. The problem was not during high school when I was aiming to be accepted into a good university liberal arts program. After freshman year I realized in time that I was following the wrong path toward an unwanted future in engineering. The following year I declared my major in Literature and Rhetoric but it still all became rather confusing for the next 2 decades.
After graduation, my absolute, positive certainty about being a writer someday instead became a dream with many questions. During the early 1990s there was a recession. People were lucky to have a job offer at all. Maybe I could write a book on the side, someday, but in what practical profession could I apply my degree? Would I teach? Would that be enough to pay rent? How about law or business instead?
So I took a fork in the road that led to the business side of advertising, the media department, where my job was to buy print or outdoor space and radio or television broadcast air time. It's ironic that I did that professionally for 8 years on behalf of my high visibility million dollar advertising clients, and yet every day now that I am free to write, I am battling to carve the right space and time to do what I was always meant to do: write!
The problem is that what we do for a living is directly attached to our ego and our exterior fashion. People judge us when we say what we do for a living. Does it fit us? Are we providing for ourselves and our families adequately? Are we making our folks proud? At some point we all submit to these very revealing questions. The true question is, are we listening to our inner voice? What's it saying because that knows more about us than everyone we think knows us inside and out.
The old adage is that we don't mind working when we are doing something we genuinely want to do. There is no question that if I was already a writer when my children were born that I would have found a way to balance my all my loves in my life correctly. Instead, I found myself writing media plans, press releases, copy for websites and brochures, introductory sales letters, pitch letters, leader speeches, feature articles, news articles, newsletter blurbs...the list goes on.
I kept thinking, this isn't me. My family comes first. I need to get back on track with my original goal to write. Books. Children's books. Books for women. Books that inform about something I've learned. Books that absorb women, make them care and laugh or cry. So I walked away from promising tracks in advertising, market research, journalism, communications. I kept getting promoted because I was a hard worker. I had good business sense. I learned fast and I was efficient. They never would have guessed that I was so unhappy. They figured me for a "lifer." Well I fooled them all, especially myself.
But I do not regret anything I've ever written. Because I realize that I would not have this perspective or steadfastness now had I not experienced other kinds of writing. Perhaps that is why I am now able to be direct in my writing and softer when the occasion calls for it. Perhaps every single person I have met, likeable and grossly unappreciated, will somehow work their way into my books as characters.
I certainly have met my fare share of pleasant and repulsive types. Some led hateful, pushy, lazy, smarmy, manipulative and whiney lives while others were sincere, saintly, cheerful, hard-working, earnest and truly inspiring against the odds. I have worked in such crazy environments that it's a miracle I ever survived them. I have worked with stoic and robotic workhorses who must also have a soul somewhere in their bodies, screaming to be noticed or to express their true selves.
Yes, there are many stories to tell.
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