Like you, I wasn’t born knowing how to write.
But I was born to write.
I had plenty to write about. It started with congenitally dislocated hips, resulting in a permanent limp. I got my first glasses in 2nd grade, my hair was unfashionably wavy, and I wore ugly corrective shoes, which did NOT correct my flat feet. Raised Jewish in a small Catholic suburb of Chicago, I was a nail-biting, thumb-sucking, nervous middle child with a world-class overbite. I also had an imagination that ran to the morbid. Every time my dad drove us into Chicago to visit my grandmother or some obscure museum, I imagined the crash that would kill us all. I quietly buckled my seatbelt, though, because I planned to live with my aunt and uncle after everybody else died. I was morbid, yet practical.
Fifth grade was a turning point.
I was 10 years old. My teacher, Hester Peterson, ended every Friday by projecting a photograph onto the pull-down screen in front of the blackboard. Always that famous last page from Life Magazine, called Miscellaneous. She gave us time to write about the photo, collected our papers, skimmed through them,
and chose a few to read to the class.
I remember the first time she picked my story, and I heard my words read aloud. I had meant it to be funny, and sure enough, my classmates laughed. That day, I vowed to be one of her top picks every week. I wasn’t blond, thin, or pretty, I stunk at gym, and I couldn’t do long division, but Hester Peterson showed me that I could write. She changed my life.
Fast Forward
We can skip over high school, college, my first jobs, and the business I ran for twenty years and ended up hating. Someday I’ll tell you about adopting my daughter when I was single, then meeting, dating, and marrying my husband, adopting our son, and moving to the Indianapolis suburbs to become a stay-at-home mom. We can also skip over all the short stories and novels I started, but never finished.
The story I finished found me.
I was outside on my driveway, hanging out with my mom friends. One revealed sad news about a couple across the street. He was cheating on his wife, she said, and they were divorcing. I noted his car parked in front of the house. Half kidding, I suggested how we could teach him a lesson in how to treat the wife and mother of his children. My friends loved my idea, but, of course, we did nothing.
Then another mom spoke up. We had it all wrong. His wife had been cheating for years, and he had finally found someone who loved him. A horrifying thought came to me. What if we had done what I’d said, and then found out the truth? How would I have recovered from that?
I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The idea kept playing out in my head… a bunch of women who DO what responsible, respectable women only TALK about doing. The possibilities got darker and more ridiculous. In other words, it was FUN. A title came to me, as did a cast of characters. I’d always said I’d write a novel someday, and now I had a story.
I signed up for local writing classes.
I’d been a writer all my life, though mostly marketing and safety video scripts and advertising copy. I was used to client deadlines, and I still needed that discipline. Those local writing classes gave me deadlines to meet. I also met other writers in those classes. A group of us, including Peter J. Welling, the instructor and a much-published author, formed a critique group that still meets almost 20 years later. I still treat our meetings as deadlines for new chapters.
Fortune and Glory
Four years into writing my novel, I attended a writers’ conference in California. After the closing lunch, a dream came true; a literary agent took me aside. She said she’d heard good things about me and asked me to submit my first 50 pages.
I went straight to the hotel gift shop, walked past the discount table, and bought my kids fancy sweatshirts. Full price. The good stuff. With the help of my critique group, I polished those 50 pages until they shone. Then I waited for the invitation to become AMERICA’S NEW BEST-SELLING AUTHOR.
Instead, I received a rejection letter.
The agent wrote three words: You’re not ready. I was transported back to my chubby, awkward, grade school self. Overbite, limp, and all.
You’re still nothing special.
You’re still invisible.
You’ll never be one of the cool kids.
Being a mature woman, though, I put on my big girl panties and started revising my novel. Well, no, I didn’t. First, I whined and moaned and pouted. I blamed the agent, of course, for not recognizing my genius.
Finally, I wondered if she might be right. Maybe I wasn’t ready.
So how do I get ready? The woman I’d shared a cabin with at the conference had given me a course catalog for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. I remember her words: “This is a good conference, but if you really want to learn to write, you go to Iowa.” I dug out the catalog and read the course descriptions. Honestly, I didn’t understand some of them.
Maybe there was other stuff I didn’t understand? Like how to write a novel.
So I went to Iowa that summer. And for nine summers after that. Every summer, I’d come home and rewrite my novel… Every class opened up another world of understanding about point of view, dialogue, plotting, voice, story structure, and so much more. It was like a Master of Fine Arts program, but slower.
And speaking of slower, I was still a stay-at-home mom. Much of my writing took place in the middle of the night, when the house was quiet, and I couldn’t sleep. Thank you, menopause.
I got an agent.
About halfway through my decade at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, I started submitting my novel to agents. I felt ready. After a few close calls, I found an agent who loved my writing. Of course, this agent was new and had few publishing contacts, which is why she took on a new writer. Still, I was disappointed when she couldn’t find a publisher for me. On the other hand, I saw, again, that my novel still wasn’t as good as it needed to be. So, I kept taking classes in Iowa and I started a second novel, inspired by a health scare. Having two projects going had benefits—when I was stuck on one, I could work on the other.
Finally, in 2017, fourteen years after that afternoon on my driveway with my mom friends, Revenge of the Soccer Moms was as good as I could make it. In my mid-50s and out of patience, I decided to self-publish on Amazon. Three years later, I published The Dead Mothers’ Club.
Then I found a NEW CALLING
You’ll probably find this out, too. When writers find out you’re a writer, they’ll ask you to read their writing. When this began to happen to me, I realized that all those years of writing and rewriting and taking class after class had taught me a lot. I could identify the strengths and weaknesses in what I read and offer suggestions. In 2019, I started giving writing seminars in libraries. Until the pandemic shut down the libraries.
Covid-19 forced me online
Since 2020, thanks to Eventbrite and Zoom, I’ve presented writing seminars to over 2,000 writers from all over the world. Offering free seminars lets me give back for all the help I’ve received over the years. The seminars also help me find committed writers who want to improve their skills through one-on-one coaching.
Maybe you’ll be one of them?