The other day as we rode the train home from work, a coworker and I started comparing educations. Not in the snotty one-upmanship sense—we both went to small liberal arts colleges so trying to outbrain one another would have been useless—but more to look back at our paths to this point. I’d been Pre-Med, ready to commit eight more years (at least) of my life to schooling, and she’d gone the business route with a minor in accounting. While both driven fields, our choices of science and commerce would have little to compare except for the small fact that we both had an epiphany our Junior year.
I couldn’t be a doctor, I realized. I liked to sleep! Residency would kill me, and before it did, I’d probably kill someone as sleeplessness made me a less than friendly (or focused) individual.
As for my coworker, she didn’t even like the classes she was taking. Where was the creation, the real world, something beyond the theoretical pie chart? There had to be more than numbers!
While I stuck out that last year to finish that Biology degree—albeit one that suddenly acquired an ecological bent—my coworker changed her mind entirely. Interior Design became her focus and business and accounting fell by the way side.
In the end, she’s circled a back a bit. She now works in the Treasury department for a large corporation. Meanwhile my biology degree adds nothing to my ability to process checks in Payroll other than the knowledge to identify the hawks that nest the next building over.* Nevertheless, we’re both happy with our life choices, and how they lead to the people we are now. It was fun to look back to see how far we’d come, and how different it could have been.**
Our conversation, and the need to come up with a column topic, got me thinking about how much I love to hear an author’s story. Did they always know they were going to write, despite the bad marks their poetry (obviously misunderstood) received in high school, or were they doing something else—law, medicine, parenthood, secretarial work—when they picked up a pen and started putting works to paper in some form other than a shopping list? What made the writer the writer they are? How did they hone their craft? What happened when their first book sold?
Are these new questions? Groundbreaking? Goodness no. The same questions probably get asked at every single signing a professional writer does. And I’m sure that not all writerly stories of how he or she got to that first punctuation point are interesting, but a great deal are. And those who are one of the 2 % of the population with a manuscript in their closet or those who just love an author’s work, will continue to ask and be amazed at the dedication it took to get a book to its published state.
If the path doubles back on itself and takes a few odd twists, all the better. I know I’d love to hear about it.
*Red-tailed, if you were wondering.
**Because someday, you might ask yourself…
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I fell into writing by mistake — I’m not one of those people who “knew” she was a writer from age 4. But I ran out of space on my walls for needlepoint, needed a creative outlet, and through a series of semi-connected happenstances ended up writing. Other than a strong background in reading, and good grades in high school English, I had no tools of the craft. But learning them was a challenge, and I figured at my age, I’d be curious to see if I could master them.
And then, being published wasn’t a goal–I sort of figured if someone knocked on the door and asked if I had any manuscripts he could publish, I might be willing to show him mine.
However, thanks to the incessant prodding from a crit partner, I started submitting.
If anyone wants more details, they’re here (in the behind the scenes section of my website if my attempts to encode the URL don’t work)
I’ll tell you a dirty little secret.
Being a writer is EXACTLY like running a business (one of the reasons I find it so enjoyable). You look at what the market wants, create a product, sell it to a reseller (publisher), negotiate a fair price, sell and market it to an end buyer (reader), building a customer base.
True business folk don’t deal much with numbers. They hire accountants for that. They’re too busy creating, marketing, and selling. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
I’m a businesswoman (big surprise after that rant). I enjoy writing and I wanted to see more novels about businesspeople who enjoy being businesspeople (are not frustrated artists, etc) so I figured, heck, I’m semi-retired, I’ll contribute to the writing community. I’m still a businesswoman, will be one til the day I die, but now write also.
I’ve always loved two things really a lot – Babies and Stories. I’ve been cuddlin’ babies since I was a baby and I wrote my first book at age Four. When I graduated high school, it was predicted that, at age 40 and while working as a nanny in England, I would publish my first novel. Well, I’ve already done the Nanny Thing and have my own babies now. I have no desire to live in England, although I desperately want to visit and explore every knook and cranny. And I’m not Forty yet either.
I’ve been writing since I was a teenager, but I had all sorts of other life plans. My writing was just something I did that made me feel better. My life has come full circle now and I realise that writing is something I can do and maybe make others feel better (if only a laugh or a smile or a sigh).
A friend recently reminded me that I announced my intention to write a book when I was about 12 and that she was going to edit it. I sort of vaguely remember getting the typewriter out and starting but I don’t believe I got very far.
But I’ve always loved to write and used to pour that energy into writing long letters to people – mostly during college lectures (shame shame on me) I finished college (with honors, in spite of my wandering attention) and went on to get a degree in Library Science.
It wasn’t until I’d finished with my studies that I had more time for leisure reading and that’s when I started to think “hmmm…I could do that” and I started to write. Took me a while to hone my skills and get published but here I am