I'm Still Surprised that I Am an Author

With four published books and four more in various stages of progress I still find myself asking if I am truly an author. That's just my take on things at the moment. I am getting better with this identification. That fact is, I've been an author in my mind for the majority of my life. In grade school I was tagged by teachers as a gifted writer and that gave me the desire to someday write a book. It took me fifty years to do it.

My very first book, Charlie's Dream (still not published), was envisioned after I overheard a conversation at a food court. One woman told her friend about her grandchild asking if her dreams traveled to other people. I thought that was fascinating. At the time, I was a student at university, a single mother with two young daughters and a bunch of guinea pigs. One of them was named Charlie. I began to wonder what would happen if Charlie's dream could travel to other people in our home. They say to write what you know so that is exactly what I did; Charlie's Dream was soon written.

I like to work with a single, simple idea and let it stew in my mind for an extended period of time. Once I start writing, the words just flow out of me having allowed my unconscious mind to fill in the details. For me, and I'll bet for many authors, I don't know what I will write until I actually write it. The journey is one of intense inner work. This was very true when I wrote Please Tell Me Who I Am. I wrote it while sitting in a mall food court with all the noise in the room filtering into the background. I was alone in my task and write I did, about 30 pages a day, handwritten! The next day I would just pick up where I left off and proceed from there.

So that was the beginning of my career but it wasn't until Please Tell Me Who I Am was self-published that people started calling me an author. That surprised me but it also nourished my writer's soul. Today, I am having a children's book, The Storm, being published for me by Amazon Kindle. They are handling the illustrations and the marketing. It's fabulous and I think that I can finally admit to myself that I am an author.

If you are an aspiring author, I hope you find your journey to be as steady a force in your life as it is in mine.

Blessings,

Barbara