Well, we’ve entered the month of August, the one most people consider the last month of summer, even though summer doesn’t end officially until September 22 this year. It’s still July as I write this since I’ll be taking the month of August off for a much-needed vacation. I’m traveling to Newfoundland, Canada’s tenth province, and hope to come back with lots of writing ideas.
This month’s topic:
August 5 question – As a writer/author what is something you regret? Or something that you wish you’d done differently in your writing process?
I regret not starting my career as a writer sooner. I regret never having taken marketing courses so that I would know the easiest, most cost effective methods of promoting my work.
Let me put my first regret into perspectivesince there is nothing I can do now about the second. As a child with asthma in the fifties and sixties, I spent a lot of time alone in bed. I learned to read early and always aspired to be an author, so that I could share my stories with others. At sixteen, I entered a non-fiction writing contest and won third place. That’s when I told my parents that I wanted to be a journalist. Their response was a loud and final NO. Careers for me were: teacher, nurse, secretary, salesclerk. End of story. I put away my dream like the good obedient child I was and went on to be an English teacher where I taught how to write short stories, news reports, poetry, but didn’t write myself.
In the later years of my teaching career, I got the opportunity to write curriculum for the Ministry of Education and I loved it. Around the same time, our local newspaper was looking for someone to write children’s stories for a family page. I got the job, and although the page only lasted eighteen months before the paper was sold and the feature ended, it was my first attempt at being a fiction writer.
Time moved on and between work, church, and family responsibilities, there was never enough time to write. But once I retired, I had lots of time, and I gave in to my desires. I wish someone had encouraged me to write in my spare time, but knitting, crocheting, even selling Tupperware were higher up the to-do list than indukging my imagination. The fact that I published my first novel at 63 proves that I should have tried harder to do what I wanted to do and not what others considered acceptable. Never give up on your dreams, but don’t set them on the backburner either. Fight for what you want and what you believe. It may take a while, but in the end, anything is possible. My career as an author is proof of that.
That’s it.
Check out other responses to the question here: https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html
Living the Dream 