I can’t believe I missed my anniversary!
Well, actually, I can. My husband and I regularly miss our wedding anniversary—if it wasn’t for my mother-in-law calling to wish us a happy anniversary every year we’d never remember.
But I’m not talking about that one. I’m talking about the one of January 1st of 2004 – twenty years and nearly 11 months ago. Would you believe that is the date my very first book was published?
How could I have forgotten?
It was a momentous day for me, certainly.
I remember getting the box of books from my publisher on December 23rd, 2003—they sent me 25 copies just before the book came out. I was so excited! And then I was annoyed because my dedication was missing. I called my editor the next day to complain. She was annoyed that I had done so—on Christmas eve!!, but then, she was in the office—she then explained that the dedication was at the top of the copyright page. Weird place for it, but it was there. “This book would not have happened without the loving support and brutal honesty of my husband and the reluctant patience of my children.” I admit, it’s not as good as the one my mother wrote in one of her books (a non-fiction book on socio-linguistics), “This book is dedicated to televised ball games for keeping my husband entertained and leaving me time to write…”
So after being a published author for twenty years what lessons have I learned?
The most important one is what I always like to tell new authors: Writing is a practice, just like being a doctor or a lawyer. You are always practicing, learning, and getting better. If you aren’t, you’re doing something wrong.
This is how I’ve approached writing for the past twenty years. I’ve read. I’ve studied. I’ve attended seminars, workshops, and conferences and I always come away with a new idea or a new concept.
The other thing I’ve learned is to never give up.
I’ve been tempted to a number of times, but the stories within me just wouldn’t quiet. They wanted out and so I kept on writing. I have been through wonderful times when my books were selling well, and terrible times when day after day there was that ugly zero on my Amazon KDP dashboard. But I kept going. I’ve gotten amazingly wonderful reviews, and I’ve got horrible ones. I’ve given classes where there were fifty people in attendance, and some where there were three. I still haven’t given up.
I think of it as stubbornness. My husband is kinder and calls it tenacity. Whatever you call it, you need it. Every writer does because every writer is going to go through those bad times when they wonder why they keep doing this to themselves.
The answer is because we need to. We have stories to tell. We have people to entertain, and people to relieve—if only for a little while—of their ordinary life. That’s why we do this. And after twenty years, I can’t see a day when I would stop.
I think about retirement and I’m slowly moving in that direction, but the one thing I will never retire from is being a writer. I can’t. If I tried, I would have to retire from being me. This is who I am and I’m looking forward to another twenty years of writing my novels, creating my characters, and, hopefully, of someone closing one of my books, once they’re done reading it, with a happy sigh.