On the 75-year journey of becoming a writer/artist

4th grade: magazine image of a gondolier in Venice. 

A soap bubble of imagination rises with a yearning

to tell his story, too soon popped by the sharp prick of reality.

Recess plays written by Charlene Storm, acted out by four little girls.

One budding playwright submits a script in tiny, unreadable words. 

First rejection.

Books: magic carpet portals to other worlds. 

Story-gifts from the gods.

Safe-haven for a lonely, unseen wanderer.

10th grade: a picture on a wall, dark and misty, 

a lake, a windmill, a house on a far shore.

words rise unbidden, weaving a story:

a woman, a man, a connection across time and space.

A beckoning to tell their story forces words onto paper.

Pages tucked into a class notebook

remain a story untold from a writer undeclared,

as intention to share is silenced by fear.

College: flooding of dark words playing themselves into poems,

creative writing classes with wild man and storyteller, William Foster Harris,

red-inked submissions returned with no encouragement.

Tiny, unremarked diversions from the path of real life.

Real Life: numbers, assets and liabilities, income statements

overshadow periodic leaking of words onto the page,

beloved IBM Selectric hidden in a cramped under-staircase closet,

secret submissions to magazines and journals, 

fat returned-manuscript envelopes, form letter rejection slips. 

 

(years scroll by until ... )

New Editor: rejection-proof newsletter: MindPlay, editor Joyce Wycoff.

Content: whatever sparks curiosity and interest.

Slowly, a small group of followers emerge.

Suddenly, a book contract appears, and then a book.

One day, at the checkout counter in a bookstore,

a woman stands holding a book with a bright blue cover:

my book. 

At 45, I became an author. It would take many more years

to understand that I am a writer. It is what I do; it is how I

process the world. It would also take the upheaval that came

with losing my spouse to realize I needed the combination of

words and images to say the things I wanted to say.

If I had been particularly astute, I might have learned that

in the fourth grade. 

 

Now available at BookBaby Store

 

Still available almost 30 years later.