I’ve often thought about becoming a writer, writing a book, and also publishing it, but it was something that I always pushed to the back burner. I run my own business full-time, have a young daughter and my husband, and start a second business and career was not something I set out to do. There is only so much bandwidth a person has.
That is until an idea, a scene and a couple of characters popped into my mind. I have been a voracious and avid reader for close to ten years now. I was never a good reader, and I struggled with a learning disability for a long time. I hated reading, and I was a painfully slow reader until I read my first romance book. Reading books normally took me a long time to finish, if at all. I consumed the book in a day, and I wanted more!
I found what I loved. I now no longer hated reading. I was no longer a slow reader. I had found my thing, the thing that made a hard task enjoyable and fun. I read and still read a lot. I read about a book a day. I love romance. Romance books are my jam!
I read so much that I had friends start to ask me, “Have you ever thought about writing your own romance book?”. I would laugh and scoff. No, I mean yes. I always thought I would write a business or self-help book related to my work. I never thought I would write a romance book of my own.
See, I had tapes for writing too, as I had with reading. I had teachers tell me in school that I couldn’t write. I had Fs on creative writing assignments to prove I wasn’t a writer. I never tried creative writing. I was not a good writer until one day, and I had two voices and a particular scene in my head that would not leave me alone. It kept flashing in little glimpses here and there throughout the weekend. I had a vivid dream about these two characters, and I finally just woke up when I couldn’t sleep and wrote it all down.
I wrote it. I was now a writer. I liked the scene and the characters, and I had an idea of where the story would go next, but I still had the thought that I wasn’t a writer. So I shared my scene and the characters with a writer friend of mine. She was not just any writer, and she was a published romance writer. I wanted her to tell me if it were any good. I wanted her to tell me I was a bad writer, that I should shelve the story, but she didn’t.
She told me she loved it. She told me she wanted to read more. She told me that my story was a book she would enjoy reading. Then she told me to keep going, to write more. I had approval and recognition and now I needed to do the hard work and write the book.
The book’s story is very different now than just that one original scene that I had my friend read. That one scene is now a small part of chapter six in book one. I have been learning to outline, learning the craft of writing by doing it. I have now had one idea of a simple story become the idea for a series. The one idea has now become a dream actually to write three full-length novels and to publish them. I now have the dream not just to write but to become an author. To make writing books a business. Now I have the idea for many books and stories.
Be careful what stories and nonsense you tell yourself because the opposite might be true. Be mindful of the limiting beliefs we hold onto because one scene may become a book, and one book may become many. You are capable of hard things. You are capable of doing the seemingly impossible. Who knows, you may just become a reader, a writer, or an author.
I look forward to sharing my stories with you, and I can’t wait to publish book one of what is now Kolibri Court. I can’t wait to see my books out there in the world, and who knows, you may enjoy them.
