It only took me a couple of decades to work up the nerve to enroll in a creative writing class, the first I’d taken since Grade 9 English.
I’ve always been, at least peripherally, involved with writing and writers. I love to read, took English classes at university and toiled at a local bookstore for four years. I even worked for a major publisher, but in the research department where I honed my skills, such as they were, on sales presentations and in-house newsletters.
Aside from these forays my experience has been mostly, though not limited to, children’s fiction (stories I wrote to amuse my kids on rainy afternoons), birthday limericks (a family tradition of sorts), a number of songs (some of which my husband and I recorded on a couple of million-seller CDs – meaning, we have a million of them in the cellar) and the beginnings of The Great Canadian Novel (which is now buried in the hard drive of a deceased computer).
I have spent more than 30 years admiring writers and their craft. One famous Canadian author’s son once told me that the best way to learn to write is to read. I took this advice to heart and so, in addition to reading novels, biographies and topical tomes, I read books on how to write, when to write and what to write. The more I read, however, the less likely I was to ever do any writing.
The fact is, I’m an easily discouraged person, and it’s especially easy to be discouraged when you’re reading the work of writers who always seem to have something brilliant to say, and an equally brilliant way of saying it. These people filled me with fear and self-doubt. How dare I even attempt to play at their craft? I was like a novice cook who dreams of serving gourmet meals when all she can make is Kraft Dinner.
Not only was I battling my fear of ineptitude, I was battling time. Since I wasn’t getting any younger, I looked for encouragement in stories of authors such as Carol Shields, whose writing career took off when her children were grown. Or my own mother-in-law, whose first book was published when her grandchildren were nearly grown.
I’ve come across other examples of late bloomers, and though secretly I’ve wondered if they’re telling the whole truth about their age when they began writing, I’ve noticed they all have in common a long-held belief that, sooner or later, they would be writers. Perhaps never paid or published, but a crafter of words. I found some hope in this because, even as a young girl, I harboured a vague expectation that I might have something to say, on paper, by the time I was middle-aged.
I decided to start putting together a story that had been brewing in my brain for a couple of years. I thought I should follow the sage advice of a seasoned author I greatly admired. He began a novel by creating an outline of the plot and a list of characters. He always carried a notebook with him in which he could jot down ideas, phrases and plot twists as they came to mind. He did thorough research and made copious notes. When the time came, and he would recognize the time, he would sit and write his novel. It would unfold as naturally as a rose in June. Or so he said.
