Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Following My Dream

Since I was a child making up pretend stories and acting them out, I have wanted to be a writer.  I used to start writing down the stories that I liked to pretend, but I never got very far.  At the end of junior high I began keeping a journal and have continued that practice off and on throughout my life. 

As a teenager I wrote angsty poetry about whoever I was in love with at the time and had a few of them accepted in the school literary magazine.  Occasionally I talked my teachers into letting me write something in place of a regular assignment - for my entry in the 10th grade Math Fair I wrote a short story about math.  To my shock and chagrin, it won the fair.  I was embarrassed to take my project to the regional fair because the other projects had something to do with math while mine was creative writing.  Once I convinced my English teacher to let me write a poem instead of an essay, and I got an A.  There were lots of creative writing and journaling assignments in high school as well.

In high school I also wrote a play that got an honorable mention in the state Thespian Club playwrighting competition.  I think I was 4th out of 5.  It didn't matter to me how I placed as much as it mattered that I finished the play.  In college I wrote plays in the place of final papers for my Comparative Religion Class and my Contemporary Theatre class. I still can’t believe I got away with it.  Maybe the professors were as sick of reading essays as we were of writing them.

In my early twenties I took a correspondence course from the Institute of Children's Literature on writing short stories children.  I took the course while working at my full-time job as a stage manager for Virginia Stage Company.  I often had to send my assignments in late.  I did manage to write a few short stories and started to research where to send them for publication.

A few years after completing the correspondence course, I read Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, given to me by a dear friend.  I began doing timed writings about a variety of subjects including school lunches, things I wanted, things I didn't want, etc.  I moved on to Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way.  A key component of that book is doing what Julia calls Morning Pages, in which you write 3 pages long hand every morning when you wake up.  I worked my way through Artist Dates and the Week of No Reading (not sure I could do that one today!)  To this day I will occasionally do morning pages as a way of clearing my head at the beginning of the day.

Shortly after The Artist's Way I had a month off from Virginia Stage, and I declared it my Month o' Writing.  Never has my apartment been so clean.  I cleaned the kitchen, including my 3/4 size oven and stove.  I cleaned the refrigerator, the claw-foot tub, underneath the furniture.  I had meals with friends and took breaks for walks.  Another writer friend of mine says that when she is supposed to be working on her next writing project her cats start looking at her with their heads tilted because their crazy human will clean the litter box three times in the same hour.  Sounds about right.

By the end of the Month o' Writing, I had written a poem and a short story.  Maybe I had started another short story.  Mostly I would write on my back deck in the evening when the air had been cooled a bit by a breeze.  I sat in my forest green plastic chair that I got from Wal-Mart and covered the matching round table with a dish towel to minimize smudges from dirt or bugs.  About the time that I had found my rhythm, it was time to go back to work.  I decided that I didn't need to quit my day job.  

In the fall of 1999 and the spring of 2000, I began writing prayers in a journal as I prepared to go on a pilgrimage to Israel.  I compiled some of them into a book, A Cup of Tea and a Prayer, that I gave to friends and family members as gifts.   After I returned from Israel I wrote my first real creative non-fiction piece about my trip, Stones that Speak: Stories of a Pilgrim's Journey.  I had never written nonfiction before (except perhaps for a school assignment.)  I didn't like reading it, and so I didn't think I'd like to write it.  I wanted to capture my trip, so I gave it a try.  I also wrote a short story around that time called The Sun Fairies, the last one I have written.  I submitted it to Fantasy and Science Fiction and maybe one more magazine, but it wasn't accepted. 

In 2001 I decided that I wanted to be a writer for real, for real, so I applied to the MFA program at ODU.  I had only taken three English classes in college.  On the application I wrote that I wanted to write science fiction and fantasy (because I love reading them).  I went to an interview.  I received two different rejection letters.  At the same time, my priest invited me to join a group of women discerning a call to ordained ministry.  It seemed clear that God didn't want me to be a writer.

As I prepared for seminary and began my first attempts at preaching, I discovered I had a knack for writing and delivering sermons.  Ah-ha, I thought.  That is what I need to be writing.  Sermons.  For the better part of ten years I have focused my writing attention on sermons (plus paper-writing during three years of seminary.)  Sermons are not easy to write many weeks, but they do have a set length - mine are usually four pages space-and-a-half - and I have scripture texts from the weekly lectionary that give me a jumping off place. 

I'd pretty much given up on being a "real" writer - you know, one that gets published and paid.  I have known since the Month o' Writing that I don't have the discipline to make a living from my writing, even if I did have a piece accepted for publication.  Writing sermons is fairly relentless, even for someone who doesn't preach every Sunday.  It has seemed like enough.

But something has been missing.

I still want to be a writer.  For real.  With a book and everything.

This summer I discovered the Muse Writer's Center in Norfolk.  I signed up for a class on Creative Nonfiction.  I have loved every minute of it!  Except the part where I have to drive through Hampton Roads rush hour traffic and both tunnels are blocked and what should take about 45 minutes to drive takes more than two hours.  Sometimes it's taken almost two hours to get home because of tunnel closures and construction.  But other than that, I have loved it.  Assignments, readings, detailed feedback of my pieces, in-class writing exercises, instruction on craft - it has been fabulous! 

I've written two pieces that my teacher says with more revision would be good to submit for publication.  I won't lie - I do hope I'll be published at some point.  Most of all, I'm happy to be working toward my dream of being a writer. 

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