The Papers of My Past

I admit it...I suck at blogging. I don't mean to, and perhaps years ago...before I rediscovered the joy of writing and finally publishing...I might have rambled on about most anything on a blog. Now that I'm actually writing the way I always wanted to and sharing it with others, I suppose I've reserved my words more carefully. If I can come up with precious words to share, I want to make them part of my books.

But today, I went through many years of papers and journals that I've been keeping since I was a young girl, and I simply had to share a few thoughts. Those papers and journals mean the world to me, and I actually panicked at first because I couldn't remember where I placed them after looking at them last. It would be like losing part of my soul to lose those books of my most personal thoughts and secrets.

I've been telling people since publishing my first book less than a year ago that I'd been writing since I was 9. We remember certain things like that, and we repeat them over and over, but I honestly had forgotten just what I did that started it all at the age of 9. Today while thumbing through these priceless papers of my past, I found the answer.

It was hidden inside a homework assignment I'd saved from high school, dated September 12, 1980 and only labeled "2nd period." The paper was entitled, "Journalism and Me" and described why I loved writing, how I came to love it, and what my plans were to use it in the future. I tell my own story of how I began to write...and thank goodness, because the actual way it happened was something I'd completely forgotten. After re-reading it today, I'll never allow myself to forget it again. This is an excerpt from my paper about how I began writing:

"A nine year-old girl sits in her school desk on a Monday morning and is told by her teacher to begin working on a penmanship assignment. A minimum of 32 words were required to be written, either copied from a textbook or made into the form of a poem by the student. The youngster had become irritated with simply copying words from a book, she so began writing her own choice of words and formed them into poetry. She liked the way her selection of words sounded together, and from then on, she wrote a poem every day of the week for her writing assignment. Her teacher became very complimentary of her work and persuaded her to enter her writing in an upcoming literary contest that was to be sponsored by the school. The young girl did, and won top honors in her division. This made her very proud, and also made her decide to carry out this new-found talent to its fullest extent. This little girl was me."

Of course now that I read that, the memories of how it all happened flood back. Even then, I was bored with standard assignments and copying words just for the exercise of improving my penmanship. And so my love of writing and poetry and connecting words together was born. It never left me, no matter what I did. I have thousands of pieces of paper where I've written about a special day, a person I randomly met, a street I passed by, or a date I went on. Almost every little thing I did became something to write about. And then, the unthinkable happened...I stopped writing altogether.

It seemed normal at first. I wondered if perhaps if it might have just been a way to express thoughts and hopes and dreams, and that it was time to put all that aside and be an adult. I tried to write again over the years, but the words were so forced and felt so unnatural that I felt defeated each time I made an attempt. My life seemed to have moved on in another direction and I believed that my writing would forever be something in my past.

In those numerous scraps of saved papers and journal pages, I found countless entries that began this way:

"I wish I'd never stopped writing."
"My pen trembles now as it touches the paper because I can't think of anything to say."
"I vow to start writing again."

And so those and many others came and went, and yet all along, the words were still building up inside me. They were dying to come out, and I couldn't seem to figure out how to make that happen. I'd never shown my work to anyone really, other than what I turned in for assignments or wrote for student newspapers. Once or twice I gave a poem to someone as a gift, but it was with the utmost promise that it was only for their eyes. For the most part, stacks of writing that no one had ever seen turned more and more yellow day by day. Sadly, I realized that, in my late forties, I had given up on the very thing I thought I would build my life upon.

Then one day in 2012, after the last of my four children had graduated from high school and begun college, after my husband's career was stable and his PhD was completed, I was moved to write a paragraph. I studied that paragraph for almost two months, and recited it to myself over and over. It became my inspiration for my first published novel, and it was from that paragraph that Rose was born. That paragraph is buried deep within the book now, not as the beginning of a chapter or anything that might stand out to anyone else, but yet a paragraph that changed my life. A paragraph that made me feel it was finally time to share...finally time to do what I always meant to do, just like I did when I was 9. Put together a selection of words in a form that I thought sounded good together. If I could do it at 9, I could still do it then at almost 49.

So after two published books now, I am still amazed at how long I waited. Some days I lament all the lost years, all the chances I could have taken, but that would only waste more time. Yes, I reserve my words carefully now, but after looking back at the papers of my past, I could only hope that maybe someone would understand my message now. That dream you had or still have, that thing you meant to do...whatever it is...do it! It's not too late. I waited almost 40 years from first discovering my love for writing to take a chance on my dream.

Grateful for each saved piece of paper from my past that never let me forget what I promised myself I would do one day. And sweet is the knowledge that I saw it to fruition.

Dream on, friends...dream on.