Santa and me at Winterfair, 2022

July, 2013. Work was beyond summer-slow. In fact, there was nothing on my desk. Which wouldn’t have been so bad except that the client who still owed me a lot of money for an appeal had decided he didn’t have to pay anymore. So no work and no cash flow. It was grim, to say the least.

I sat at the table on my back porch, contemplating my next move. Should I wait for the legal research/writing work to pick up? Or should I start looking for a job working for someone else? Was my time up as an independent contractor?

The notion of going to work in someone else’s office, on someone else’s schedule, made me shudder. But what was the alternative?

As I pondered my options, it occurred to me that for years, I’d been thinking about becoming a writer. Not just someone who does legal writing for other lawyers, but an author, one who writes creative pieces that get published. Stories. Books. Real writing.

I was fifty-three years old. I’d started writing fiction in 2006 after a hiatus of twenty-five years. I wrote fan fiction which, for me, was the best way to get back into it. Not only did I have a built-in audience who already loved the characters I was writing about, but the world had already been created so that I had the luxury of focusing on other aspects of craft, from plotting and pacing to imagery, foreshadowing, and point of view. But after a few years, the stories began to feel limited, with the same characters who had the same characteristics.

So I’d begun to broaden my horizons. One day when I started another fanfic story, it occurred to me that it didn’t have to be about those same people. I could change them up, make them my own original characters in a different setting. Turned out, the characters and setting weren’t wildly different from the ones I’d been writing about, but it was a step. Then, in spring, 2013, I signed up for the Wesleyan Writers Conference, and visiting author Roxana Robinson read and commented on my story, after which I went home and edited.

Which brought me to July, when I sat on my porch and pondered my options. Then, I recalled something the wise and wonderful Anne Lamott said so perfectly:

Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart.

I thought about the book idea I’d played with for years. I’d even added 50,000 words to it during Camp NaNoWriMo the year before. I kept thinking that someday, I’d write a book. Someday, I’d be a published author.

I knew other fanfic writers who also talked about wanting to write books. But all any of us did was talk about someday.

Sitting on the back porch, I said aloud, “It’s time to pass or play.” Either get busy writing, or find another dream.

Pass or play.

I played.

******

July, 2023. It’s been a wild ride. Looking back, I chuckle at how little I knew, both about writing and about becoming an author. But I took the leap. I signed up for Duotrope, where I studied markets and tracked submissions (the latter being something I’d never even thought about). I took classes and workshops to learn more about craft as well as publishing. I went to the Wesleyan Writers Conference again and met a writer who has become a dear friend as well as a valuable source of feedback and support. I submitted and submitted to literary magazines, anthologies, and contests. I collected a boatload of rejections, but I had some successes: of the ten stories that ended up being published, three of them won first place in contests.

I finished writing my novel, State v. Claus. For a time, I queried agents, but as time went on, I came to understand that this was by no means a guarantee of publication. Plus, traditional publishing takes a really, really long time from the acquisition of the book by the publisher to its release. It was this last point that finally tipped me over the edge: I’d just turned sixty, and I simply didn’t have all the time in the world to get this book out into the world.

So in the summer of 2020, I began learning how to publish a book on my own. I formed Tuxedo Cat Press. Since I am neither an artist nor proficient in technical matters, I hired a cover designer and an interior designer. Friends who are readers, writers, and/or teachers of creative writing read drafts and made comments and suggestions. I’d hired a developmental editor earlier in the process, and I reviewed her notes.

Finally, on October 30, 2020, I uploaded State v. Claus. Several days later, four boxes of books—of my book—arrived on my doorstep.

Much has happened since then. The following year, Tuxedo Cat Press published my novella, My Brother, Romeo, a lighthearted story about two brothers in a community theater production of Romeo and Juliet. Last year, I made the rounds of local holiday markets, hand-selling copies of my books. I worked on Becoming Mrs. Claus, the sequel to State v. Claus, which is currently slated for publication in early November.

Ten years ago, I never thought my author career would look like this. I didn’t know precisely how it would look, but I assumed a traditional route, including an agent and a publishing house. I’ve written more stories; some are published and others are currently hanging out on my hard drive. While I was querying, I started another novel, entirely different from State v. Claus, which may or may not ever see the light of day. I also write biographies for adoptable shelter cats; so far, I’ve written for more than 100 cats. Plus, I write this blog, and some people are kind enough to let me know they appreciate my musings. (Thank you!)

******

So, what have I learned over the past decade?

1. You don’t have nearly as much time as you think you do. Seriously, life goes by in a flash. I’m sixty-three years old, for crying out loud. If I’m typical of my family, that could mean I’m looking at another twenty-five to thirty years, but there’s no guarantee. My cousin’s younger son recently died at the ripe young age of forty-four of a heart condition nobody knew he had. Alternatively, just because I’m still breathing doesn’t mean my mind will remain sharp enough to produce work anybody would want to read. Bottom line: there’s no time to waste, because the lights can go out at any moment.

2. Stop expecting it to look the way you thought it would. “It” being whatever you dream of, whether it’s publishing a book, having a child, building a career, or something else entirely. Whatever it is, I guarantee that it’s not going to go the way you presently expect, because you’re at the beginning of the path. You can’t see around the first curve, much less anything beyond that. You just have to set out on the journey knowing that you’re going to need to do a lot of adjusting and adapting along the way—and also knowing that some of that adjusting and adapting may take you to a much better place than you initially intended.

3. It’s going to take a lot of work. I mean a lot. Maybe there are people who can crank out a decent book in a few hours (even with the help of AI), but I’ve never met one. If someone were paying me minimum wage ($15/hour here in Connecticut) for all the hours I’ve invested in Becoming Mrs. Claus so far—and there’s still a ton of work left to do before I hold that book in my hands—I’d be able to afford a very, very nice vacation in a place I’d love to visit, plus a lovely wardrobe for traveling. If I continued to draw that minimum-wage salary through publication, I’d have sufficient funds to hire a publicist to set up a book tour. (And this doesn’t factor in everything I did to prepare for writing this book, including reading, researching, and attending conferences and workshops pertaining to everything from craft to substantive information about the North Pole.)

All of which means that if your dream is to write a book, pursuing this dream will require a huge chunk of time—time when it seems that everyone else in your world is relaxing and socializing and having fun while you’re hunched over your desk, typing and deleting, typing more and deleting more, deleting everything and typing something else . . . you get the picture. And that’s just creating the book. After that, you’ll need to invest countless hours in getting it published, whether traditionally or on your own. Then, regardless of which way you go, you’ll need to market it. (I warned you!)

4. There’s nothing quite like it. The first acceptance. The first payment. The first time you see your name in print. The first time you see words you wrote on the pages of a magazine. The first time you see that your book is live, ready for purchase. The first time you hold your book in your hand. The first time you see a (good) review of your book. The first time someone tells you they loved it, and have you written anything else? Why, yes, as a matter of fact. . . .

5. Regrets are futile, so go for it. By the time I returned to writing in 2006, I was far too old to be anybody’s wunderkind. When I made my decision to pursue an author career at age 53, nobody was doing a “50 over 50” list of authors to watch. I wasted so many years because some ignorant people in a college workshop convinced me I wasn’t good enough. So many years when I could have been writing and studying and trying, gone forever. But it does no good to focus on those lost years. Maybe I’d have done brilliant things in my twenties, or maybe I’d have gotten so discouraged by all the rejections that I’d have put the typewriter in a closet and moved on.

But forget what might have been. The important thing is that I’m doing it now. Ten published stories, a novel, a novella, 268 blog posts (counting this one), biographies for more than 100 shelter cats. Plus twenty-six years of earning my living as a writer, albeit a legal writer rather than a creative one. And another novel that—with any luck—will be published this fall.

Not bad, I think. Not bad at all.