Don’t Wait, Write When You Can

Recently, I was asked by a young woman why I waited so long to begin writing, to which I replied, I didn���t wait.

I���ve always written.�� When I was a small child, I wrote little stories – mostly based on fairy tales I���d read – and poems. ��When I was a teen, I wrote, usually as an assignment from my English teacher, but sometimes because I just wanted to.�� Also, as a lot of teens did (perhaps still do), I kept a diary from time to time.

Then, I fell in love and began marriage and motherhood when I was eighteen. ��Not a good choice on my part, but, at the time, nobody could tell me it wasn���t.�� Ten years and three children later, I was divorced.

In between taking care of my kids, my household, and sometimes working two jobs but always at least one, and all the overtime I could get (not to mention going to school at the community college!), there wasn���t much time for writing though I would often get ideas for a story and scribble them down on whatever was handy.�� Then I���d put them in a drawer and somehow, over the years, I never got time to finish any.

Then, six years ago, I retired (yayyy!) and three years ago I found one of the few stories on which I���d actually managed to get several thousand words written.�� I had transcribed it into Word, and saved and moved it every time I got a new computer.

Gone were the days I ran from one job to another, or stayed late at my fulltime one and dragged home so tired I���d fall asleep in the shower, or try to read a book only to wake up with it on my face (though I still managed to get in some reading��– couldn’t have made it without that!).

As I read over that unfinished story, it occurred to me that I now had time to write, and a strange thing began to happen. ��It started to seem as if the characters were speaking to me, telling me the story, urging me to write it down.�� So, I did, and before I knew it, I found I���d written the first book in my Boucher���s World series, which now consists of a trilogy, a full-length, stand-alone novel, two novellas, two novelettes, and a short story.

I had written enough material for several stories in that particular universe, and even now, those characters call out to me, though I now have another series (the Juri Turner Spaceships and Magic series )��for which I���ve published book one and am halfway through book two, pulling at me for my attention.�� I���ve written other stories (the Cady and Sam werewolf stories) with more to come.

I did wait to publish but that was mainly because I wasn���t writing to publish.�� I was writing because I couldn���t not write (yeah, I know that ain���t grammatically correct as auto-correct just pointed out to me, but it���s true, so shut up, auto-correct!), but after a while I did sort of want someone other than family and friends to read my stories so as soon as I discovered I could publish as an independent author, and for practically nothing, I did (I���m now into that fixed-income thing, sooo���practically nothing, or free, is good).

The point is, and I repeat: I did not wait to write.�� I guess you could say I kind of dodged between the raindrops and skated around potholes and wrote when I could.

If you want to write, if you have to write, then do it.�� Any way you can.

And I hope to write until I���m dead.�� And even afterward if I can swing it.