Born to be wild, or born to be a writer…I think I can own both!

On January 19, 1979 I wrote my first entry into my first diary. I was in second grade.  I’m pretty sure I got the diary for Christmas. And what do you think my first two sentences of my first entry were?

“I kissed Tobin today. I went to the mall with my mom”

I go on for pages and pages about boys, friends, family dirt, TV shows. You know, the important stuff!  Pretty much what my whole young life consisted of.

As a young child I remember spending a lot of time with my grandparents; on both sides. My grandma Maxine, on my mothers side, would sit me in the front seat of her car as we drove around running errands. Every time she would start the car, she would look at me and say, “ok, tell me a story!” I would babble on about who knows what until we got to our destination and she would say, ok, stop. And I would end the story.  I can only imagine the stories that came out of my mouth!!!

The summer before I started sixth grade, our family moved to Alaska. To a little logging camp owned by my great aunt and uncle.  We lived there for a year until my great aunt and uncle sold the camp.  From there we moved to another camp further north and stayed there for two years.  While at the second logging camp we were tasked to write a book for a school project. It had to have illustrations and be so many pages. We were given a couple of weeks to write the book.  I, of course, procrastinated until the night before it was due.  That night I wrote a brilliant book about a man who lost his wife, and found love again, but all the characters had names associated with cats.  It’s hilarious to read now and to see how I perceived life, marriage and death at age 13. I got an A- on my book.  I was docked a few points because of some spelling errors, otherwise I’m sure I would have had an A++.  I can not believe that at that young of an age those words came out of my brain.  (One day I’ll type in the book and blog it.)

My family experienced things over those three years that we never would have if we stayed living in our little town in Washington State.  Lots and lots of great material for my writing!  Mom said she could see my future if we stayed in Alaska, and she wanted something different for me, so we moved back to Washington state the summer before my freshman year of high school.

In high school I continued to keep diaries, and continued to write.  I even tried writing poetry.  The poems were mainly about love and loss; typical high school problems.  My best friend and I would sit in her room, listen to love songs by butt rockers and dream about finding the perfect man.  She was lucky enough to find her perfect man in her early 20’s, but the jury is still out on me finding mine.

In my late 20’s I became pregnant with my son.  I had a lot of time on my hands since my partying days were over, or at least on hold for 9 months, so I begin to write a novel.  Of course I have not finished it yet.  I let a few of my friends read what I had written and afterwards they were asking when I would have more pages for them to read.  Then with a young child and ‘life’ happening, my writing took a pause.  I still wrote in my journal, but other then that, it was years before I started writing again.

Over my lifetime, of 45 years, I have lots and lots of things I’ve written; articles, short stories, novels, travel logs and I’ve even started a sitcom loosely based on my life. None of which are published, or have even been submitted anywhere. I have decided that I don’t want to be on my deathbed wishing I would have slowed my life down just a little so I could follow my true passion…writing.  And when I talk about writing, I’ve been told my whole face lights up. That tells me it’s the right path for me to take.  So I believe I was born to be a writer.

And I can neither confirm nor deny that I was born to be wild…you’ll have to wait for the sitcom to air…

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