Second Step: Just Write

For most of my adult life, I've wanted to write, but my largest hurdles were what to write about, how to go about it, and what to do with it afterward.

Before going to college, which is a period of my life that I like to refer to as my "former life", I would write randomly but never seriously. I'd start stories that would be left hanging forever, never touching them again. But writing wasn't something that I took seriously back then, not like I eventually did.

While I was going to college, I majored in English, along with elementary education, and became more inspired to write with all of the reading and writing I had to do for my classes. But anything I'd start would again continue to be left abandoned and unfinished. The pressure of staying on top of my classes and making it through each semester took priority instead.

After I graduated from college, I started working. I juggled three jobs as an ed tech, waitress, and part-time legal secretary for nearly three years while holding the role of a stepmom to two wonderful boys. I would write here and there, but everything would end up on the back burner once again. 

Throughout these periods of my life, I never gave up on the idea of writing. Being an author felt more like a pipe dream rather than an achievable goal, but I'd get inspiration in fits and starts. I'd write in a notebook for a few weeks then abandon it for months at a time.

But throughout the years, I wrote a few pieces that really stuck with me. 

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Before going to college, a long-term relationship came to an end. I wrote about the experience, creating a snapshot of a pivotal moment in my
relationship and my life.

I worked very hard on creating the emotion that I experienced as I relived the situation in writing. I dug deep trying to describe in first-person the emotional conflict that I experienced as I learned that the relationship was coming to an end and why. The anger, sadness, and empathy enveloped me, and although I was angry at him, and devastated for me, I felt the emotion he was going through as he admitted to his wrongdoings. I tried to capture that as well as I could.

A few years later I was inspired to submit that writing piece to a site online geared to creative writers, and received one piece of feedback, or should I say I read only one piece of feedback. I never checked back to read more because that one piece of feedback wasn't encouraging. He basically made my writing piece sound like it wasn't realistic when it was literally what I experienced during the breakup. So, discouraged, I tossed my piece to the side and left it buried in my random notebooks where it remains today. 

Maybe I'll find a use for that piece of writing in a future book, or perhaps it will stay buried forever in that notebook. Who knows. But I think this experience taught me in retrospect that one person's opinion isn't the only one out there. Everyone has their own personal experiences that they bring when they read what someone has written. Perhaps that person hadn't gone through a breakup like I had. Perhaps that person was in my partner's shoes instead and didn't like how I explained my experience. I'll never know, but as I look back at that experience, it can only help me to aim higher and better.

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Then 9-11 happened and the skies went silent. As I sat on my front porch looking up at the clear blue sky, I reflected on the lack of airplanes and
reminisced on how I loved looking up to watch them as a child. I called it "Arrows in the Sky" because the planes looked like arrowheads with the exhaust being the shaft of an arrow. 

I eventually submitted it to a poetry website and received praise. It felt pretty darn good. But thinking back to that experience now, I think it's safe to assume that everyone who submitted poetry to that site received the same feedback and praise I had. But I guess you could still call it my first published piece of writing.

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Years later I was at Burger King just outside of Quebec City. As I was holding our booth, waiting for our meal to be ready, I watched as an older gentleman walked to a booth on the side of the restaurant with his coffee and newspaper. He seemed restless and preoccupied while keeping an eye on another booth that was occupied by a young family. I tried to remember every detail as he eventually moved in as the family was preparing to leave and ended up taking over the booth. Once he was settled in it, his demeanor changed and he relaxed.

When I got back to the car, I pulled out my notebook and wrote everything I could remember down. I tried to capture the scene from the time he walked in until he got the booth that he wanted in as much detail as I could. I still have that piece in the notebook somewhere, but I think back on it now as a lesson in setting the scene, and bringing my character to life for my reader, although no one ever read it and probably never will.

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My point in this post is although I didn't write seriously throughout the past thirty-plus years as an adult, whatever I did write meant something. The three pieces I referred to aren't the only writing pieces I've ever written before I got serious and wrote Unintended Travelers, but they've all helped to eventually contribute to the writer I am today. 

I also want to make it clear that I'm in no way an expert writer. I can guarantee that there are lots of things I would change with my books. My 8th-grade language arts students convinced me to read the book together with them in class, and as we read and discuss the various scenes in the book, I can't help but think about what I might do differently if I were to revise the book. 

I'm currently working on the third book in this series, and I can't help but feel that I'm approaching my writing with a different lens than I did before. I see my writing improve as I approach the different scenes. And I guess as a teacher, that's what my goal is for my students, to be able to see themselves improve as readers, writers, historians, students, and individuals as a whole.