Big Dreams

I didn’t used to think I had any big dreams. I was a theatre major in college, so everyone assumed theatre was my dream. But while theatre was my great love and my career of choice, it wasn’t ever a dream. I never fantasized about doing theatre – I was a stage manager, and a damned good one, so I was never really without a gig. I didn’t need to dream about doing theatre, I just did it.

What I dreamed about was writing, but I never really considered that to be a particularly big dream. It just sort of itched at me every so often. I wrote stories – lots of stories – and took creative writing classes in high school and college. A couple of college professors even went so far as to tell me I should pursue writing. But by that time theatre was, as I said, my great love, and the theatre bug had me firmly in its pincers.

Years later, I was living in Chicago – office manager by day, stage manager by night – and the theatre bug let go. I can’t describe how it happened, it was as sudden and as mysterious as when the damned thing bit me to begin with. It just…let go. I no longer needed theatre. And I no longer felt as though I belonged there. I was cut loose, and left to figure out what the hell I was going to pursue now.

Around that same time, my then-husband gave me an opportunity to follow my little writing dream – I took a year off from working full time, and attempted to write something worth selling. Except I didn’t know the first damned thing about selling my words, and got pregnant in the middle of it, and basically wasted the entire year. Okay, not wasted – I have the beginnings of some great stuff that got written during that period, and my pregnancy journals are incredibly valuable to me as memories – but I didn’t take any great leaps toward ‘being a writer’. I tried the title on once in a conversation with a stranger, and I felt like a fraud.

So I walked away, into the land of responsibilities. I kept finding jobs in office management, except this time I didn’t have that pride-buffering knowledge that I wasn’t just an office manager, I was also a stage manager. The dreams inside my head and my heart wilted. I went to work every day, took care of my son, kept the house clean. I watched as the joy in my marriage leaked through our foundations like water out of a crumbling relic. I got pregnant again, this time with the full knowledge that I’d likely be raising my kids by myself. I found joy in my children, but struggled to figure out how to create a life I’d be proud of in my old age.

Then came divorce, and then cancer. The job I had at the time literally disappeared during my treatment (my entire department was dismantled), but this time when I went to find another one, I had a new perspective. I was no longer willing to settle, and this time I also realized that my ‘little’ dream of writing was actually quite large.

I wanted to write.

As you likely know if you follow this blog, my new life as a writer began with a series of non-fiction books. They were my therapy, and a way of pursuing my dream in a way that felt safer than telling stories again. I could give writing the same amount of time and focus that I’d given theatre before, and it felt wonderful.

But the stories were still there, itching at the back of my brain, and weren’t willing to hang out on the sidelines for long. There were two Big Ideas in particular that occupied my thoughts to the point of distraction. So one day, with my heart in my throat, I began to write one of them. I wanted to tell a little of my story, without actually telling my story – if that makes any sense. I wanted to explore the arc I had made during my divorce – from being too much of a people-pleaser to owning my worth and my power. Around this same time, the Ashley Madison scandals were all over the media, as well as news of a couple of male politicians who seemed to think sending pictures of their manhood to unsuspecting female coworkers was a good dating strategy. It gave me an idea – an interesting twist to the wife-finds-out-her-husband-is-cheating plot line. It sparked a story that would allow me to explore my own character arc under circumstances different from my own.

And then I made the characters witches, because, well…witches. Magic is cool.

That was nearly a year ago. When I began, I had no concept of how much time a novel actually takes to write – holy crap, even a relatively simple story line takes forever. There have been entire months when nothing got written because the ideas just weren’t there, and months when I couldn’t focus on my ‘real life’ because all I could think about were my characters and what they needed to do. Some weeks I’d branch off and play with my other Big Idea for a while, and because of those diversions I have most of an outline for that book put together too, which is awesome.

And now, here I am. My first novel is finished, and is in the process of being polished and shined up like a new penny. I’ve been living my dream, and now I get to share it. Insert happy dance here.

This first book – The Pointy Hat Brigade – is Book One of a whole series, I know that for certain. I love my witches so much, I have a feeling I’ll always come back to their stories and their challenges. They aren’t trying to save the world or fight supernatural beings, they’re dealing with the same struggles we all face – love, indifference, fear of failure, fear of success. They have mothers who drive them crazy, friends who interfere with their lives, and kids who remind them to keep an eye on the little things. Most of them screw up a lot, and get overwhelmed or angry, but can – in the end – recognize their strengths and their gifts, and ban together as a group to overcome just about anything. My witches are my comfort food.

So that’s my journey to becoming a novelist. The Pointy Hat Brigade will be released sometime in the fall – hopefully September. I’m currently working on Book Two, but I’m also piecing together my other Big Idea, and hope to get started on the actual writing of that one soon too. It’s much, much darker than Pointy Hat 😉

My kids tell their friends and teachers that their mommy is a writer, and it doesn’t make me flinch anymore. I don’t feel like a fraud at all.

Which is pretty damned cool.