Why I Started Writing (Again)

I Was a Reader First

Every great writer I admire is also an avid reader. A high school English teacher once told our class that any writer who doesn’t read is doomed to failure. I was shocked by the idea that anyone would do one without the other.

I loved fiction from an early age. My parents were both readers, and I visited the library weekly. My first attempts at writing mainly involved creating a hand-drawn cover with a title but I failed to produce the words that would make it a story.

That changed in elementary school when I began writing a series of stories about the inner lives of my dolls. Thankfully, none of those stories survived. I wrote slightly better stories in middle school, and more seriously in high school. I even took a creative writing class during my senior year. Even so, I started at Southern Illinois University having no idea what to major in, until my mother—an academic advisor—pulled out my ACT scores and said, “If you came to me with these numbers, I’d encourage you to go into Liberal Arts.” She was right. Thanks, Mom.

Learning That I Wasn’t Ready

I studied the greats in college—Faulkner, Hemingway, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison. I enjoyed writing, but graduation was coming up and I had no idea what to do next. I was still living in the same college town I’d grown up in, and I felt trained for nothing. Then my creative writing teacher, Beth Lordan, said, “We’re starting up an MFA program. You should apply.” They’d pay me to teach. I’d have something to live on. I said yes.

I did my first year of graduate work at SIU before ultimately transferring to Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. There, I discovered I was not as good a writer as I’d thought.

I wasn’t bad. I just wasn’t good.

I was surrounded by so many superior writers who seemed to have something interesting to say. And I just didn’t. I was twenty-five. What had I done in my life? I’d grown up in a pretty normal family, who’d never even moved. I’d lived in a rural area but with no specific family ties to it. My father was a college professor and that’s where he’d landed. I knew from an early age I wouldn’t stay in Carbondale. I’d traveled to maybe three other states, all in the Midwest. What did I know about anything? What did I have to say? Nothing. The novel I was trying to write for my thesis explored some of these issues—of being stuck in place, of not knowing what came next—but I kept getting feedback from my classmates that they knew where the story was headed and that journey was just…boring.

My thesis ended up being a series of creative non-fiction stories and when I graduated, I put it on a shelf, got married, and moved with my husband to the Chicago suburbs where I worked as an executive assistant, had kids, and read voraciously.

Nineteen years passed.

The Idea That Brought Me Back

Then came COVID. In March of 2020, while working from home, I found myself remembering the cheap apartment building my sister had lived in between high school and college, and a “What if?” came to mind.

After my sister moved out, the apartment building burned down in a fire someone set intentionally. Although she was living several hundred miles away in South Dakota, some people accused my sister of being responsible. The real arsonist was never found. I began to wonder, what would have caused someone to do such a thing?

That was the genesis of a story idea about a girl and her brother, who’s always been an outcast. When he disappears after a fire, she suspects him of arson, but she doesn’t know for sure. His disappearance and her silence changes the course of her whole family’s lives. I wrote thirty pages, and sent them to a friend of mine, who said, “This is good. You should finish the story.” Which I did. Eventually. (Thanks, Julie.)

And I Kept Going

New ideas kept coming:

·      A family living through COVID

·      Two sisters dealing with the father’s death

·      A widow returning home and eventually reconciling with her daughter

What I Finally Had to Say

At first, I wrote for myself. I answered a call for an anthology of stories about Carbondale. The editor suggested I submit to The Whitefish Review, which accepted my submission. I started sending my novels out in little pieces, publishing them as stories, and although I get a LOT of rejections, I’ve received enough positive feedback to keep me going.

So why did I start writing again? And what has kept me going?

I guess because after nineteen years of living and reading, I finally had something to say.

My stories are about family relationships, and moments that change the course of lives, about how secrets and silence harm, and how truths eventually come out. I write about people I can see myself in, who I sympathize with, and root for. I write about understanding, sympathy, and personal growth. I tell the kind of stories I enjoy reading. And hopefully, others do, too. So long as I get occasional nuggets of encouragement, I’ll keep going.

Thanks for reading.