Chasing a Dream

It started in high school—I’d open a blank A5 exercise book and write words down.

There weren’t many words. If I was lucky, I’d fill 10 pages, maybe 20. Then I’d read my dreadful ramblings, shake my head at my fanciful imagination, and tear the pages out. I’d repeat the process a while later with the beginnings of yet another story.

Eventually I lay that dream aside.

Adulthood crept up, and I turned to another form of writing—computer code. This kept me occupied over the next four decades, with mainframe coding turning to website development.

Chasing a Dream
Chasing a Dream

And then, in March 2015, I took up the pen again—no, that is not strictly correct—I opened a Word document on my computer, put fingers to the keyboard and started writing.

For over a year, I held this dream close to my heart.

I didn’t write a lot, as I had my day-job, and there is only so much you can get away with before people start asking what you’re doing. You see, the fear of failure, ridicule even, had a grip on me and this proved a powerful stumbling block—who was I, a woman in my early fifties, to have the audacity to even dream of becoming a novelist.

An author.

Sheer lunacy. Laughable.

But I persevered with this dream and I found I loved it. The words flowed, the scenes developed and it was pure magic.

By this stage, I could no longer keep it to myself and I needed to confess my ‘double life’. But how? Because, by admitting it, it would become a reality, and then…failure/ridicule would/could set in.

So I fretted for weeks, and on the morning before my 33rd wedding anniversary, over breakfast, my husband told me of the dream he had during the night.

He’d dreamt I was pregnant. So I told him about my ‘baby’.

Six months later, May 2017, two-and-a-bit years after ‘picking up the pen’, I completed the first draft of my first novel.

145 000 words. 500 pages.

What an awesome feeling. It was liberating.

By October 2017, the second draft of my first book was done, and I bravely gave it to three people to read. I got great reviews, but then, the trio comprised of my sisters and daughter. Maybe a bit of biased opinion there…

By the end of July 2018, my first book will be on its way to a professional for a manuscript assessment.

My second book—it’s a series of six, what can I say? I dream big—is at 80 000 words.

I can now call myself a writer. An author.

Will I become a published author?

I can only dream.

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