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My life as an author is slivers & slices of writing diced by every other thing the day can bring.
Charming, isn’t it? I’m a mom first. I sacrificed too much and worked too hard to get my two amazing babies Earth side to give them anything less than my all. Sometimes that means “You can sleep while I write.”
How did I get from Susy Shakespeare to here?
It started in third grade… My gifted and talented teacher, Linda Bennet, encouraged us to journal. My fourth grade teacher, Miss Williams for all my older sibling, and Mrs. Macklin for me, gave us story prompts (I still love prompts) that we could read to the class on Fridays. I wrote these epic (6 pages was very long at 10) stories and read them every week. My classmates called me Susy Shakespeare.
By sixth grade, I realized there was no money in poetry or short stories and shifted to journalism. Taking four years of journalism in high school, I did four more to get a degree in journalism and started to write for a national newspaper. After ten years of wanting to write for a living, it only took me two to figure out I hated newspaper. It also paid crap. And if I was going to make crap, I didn’t want to take crap from egomaniacal editors.
I veered into other industries and way off my writing course. In 2013, inspired by the breakout sensation, Orange Is the New Black, I wrote a novel in conjunction with National Novel Writing Month. You can read it for free by signing up for my mailing list.
After another writing hiatus coupled with a divorce, remarriage, move to a new time zone, three years of infertility, a two-year stint as a foster parent, earning an MBA, having a baby and then a pandemic, I sat down to write again. This time, I wanted to give writing the space it deserved in my life.
In 2020, I cut my cable and I wrote a book instead of watching TV every night. I wrote about 100 poems that year too. The next year I wrote another book and started and MFA in Creative Writing with the sole goal to write full time within five years. If you’re still reading, you are part of my dream.
So thank you. You keep reading and I’ll keep writing.
Got suggestions or ideas? Please connect!
Believe it or not, I’d love to hear from you. Email me or visit my Facebook Author Page.