I am so excited that my debut novel, RISING STAR, is coming out in six weeks. I’ve been dreaming about being a writer since I was a kid. I can’t believe it is finally happening. I had a lot of stops along the way to becoming a published author. I did my time in food service jobs like Hot Dog on a Stick (I loved that job! That hat added at least four inches to my height.). I worked for fifteen years in the entertainment industry working my way up from getting coffee and picking up trash on movie sets to managing budgets and hiring crews for television shows. I met and married the most wonderful man. I was a certified archery instructor at a local university and competed at the state and national level. I still have Olympic dreams, but they were put on the back burner when our son was born. Who knew that having a newborn son would be the perfect time to start writing a book?
I’ve written since I was a kid – really bad poems, short stories and scripts. I even came close to selling one or two projects but everything always fell through. I started writing RISING STAR when our son was just six months old. I wrote in stops and starts, sometimes putting it aside for months, but the story always drew me back.
After five years of writing, I got fed up. I decided to give writing a real shot – carving time out to write each day and treating my book like it was my job. My husband was onboard and supported my decision.
Finishing the book took another two years. Revising it, finding an agent then a publisher…what an emotional roller coaster! But I kept going after every rejection and every set back because I knew that dreams are never easy to come by. If they were, achieving them wouldn’t be so special. So I kept going, imagining every day what it would be like to get that phone call from an agent who liked my work or a publisher that wanted to print my book. And one day, many years after starting out, those things actually happened!
I think people forget to dream. It’s so easy to get caught up in everyday life – rushing from here to there, keeping up to date on social media, binge-watching the latest series, meeting deadlines at work or school. But dreams are magical. And who doesn’t need a little magic in their life? Just thinking about something you want to achieve or experience gives you a little lift, makes you feel a little lighter. If you keep thinking about it and focusing on it, soon enough you start to think about how you might achieve it.
There has to be more to life than paying bills and keeping up on Instagram. You can get so caught up in your routines that you can forget to look out for inspiration or be open to change. I highly recommend spending some time thinking about your dream today. Or if you don’t have one, find something that inspires you. It’s never too late to start. Who knows? One day you just might be a forty-something mom with her first book coming out. And that feels pretty awesome.
