How did this happen?
Who would have thought this would ever happen? To me?
Sure, I’ve thrown the idea around my head of someday writing a book. As many of us have and do. But, we all know that intention is far from action and even farther from realization. How did it transpire then, that I actually got started on my author journey?
I blame my son, Matthieu.
While we were home schooling last year, I kept my eyes open for interesting activities or workshops that we could participate in, and I came across this one by a publisher about writing a book. Cool! I took no time in signing us up. However, what I didn’t realize was that it was only for adults, so my ticket arrived in my inbox, but there was no ticket for Matthieu. Oh, well, my ticket stayed unopened in the box and we went on to other activities, other workshops, other outings.
Before I knew it, the school year was over and Matthieu was driving away to his dad’s house on the last day of school. All of a sudden, it hit me like a ton of bricks that our home school year was over and the precious year I had to spend just with my son was over. The opportunity to spend this kind of time with him was amazing and it was over. And, I cried. A lot. Big ugly cried. For a long time.
There was no one to save me from myself: my son was gone home with his dad, my partner was off to a sporting event, my friends were celebrating the last day of school. And I was not exactly in the celebrating mood. I moped for awhile and not really knowing what else to do with myself, I checked my email. While checking, I came across that ticket for the book writing workshop. The workshop was on that very night, on that very weekend. It was starting downtown. In 45 minutes. I had a decision to make: was I going to stay home and feel sorry for myself all night? Or, was I going to get out of the house and maybe learn something?
Had I stayed home and moped, there wouldn’t have been much of a blog here. As it is, I cleaned up, put on some makeup, got dressed up and headed downtown arriving about 5 minutes before the workshop started. The publisher running the workshop gave all kinds of advice about the whole writing and publishing process and it stirred up all kinds of questions, all kinds of thoughts about that desire to write a book. I had to make a decision: was I going to go through with this? Was I going to actually make the commitment to write a book?
Over that weekend, I did lots of agonizing (fear of failure; fear of success; self-doubt; self-worth…) and lots of praying. As soon as I had made my decision and said yes to myself (and to the publisher) I felt relief and calm. Once I had made the decision, I knew it was the right one. By the end of that weekend, I had started writing my first book. As simple and as complicated as that.
