I was not a creative child, but I longed to be. Throughout grammar school, I panicked whenever we had to write a poem (somehow it was never a story) and one year, avoided my teacher’s eye for weeks because he’d scrawled “Let’s talk about this” across the top of my poem about patterns. I had nothing to say. But I loved reading, and in sixth grade started to write a novel, a la Nancy Drew. But I neglected to come up with a plot, so …

Fast forward to Senior Honors English: we had to write a graduation speech. In class! The clock was ticking and I panicked, my mind blank. Finally after twenty minutes or so, having written about ten stilted words, I went up to my tall, bespectacled teacher and whispered, “I can’t write a speech.” He whispered back, “Then write an essay.” I went back to my seat and stumbled on a big secret, Begin with the particular… and was soon scribbling about how my Great-aunt Tessie always exclaimed how I’d grown, but that the infant twins I babysat once a week wouldn’t even remember me … I was off. And my “essay” was one of three picked for Graduation; luckily, we all had coaching from the drama teacher.

But I was still blocked. So after college I took a creativity workshop at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. We splashed paint on paper and used cardboard cut-outs to frame the most pleasing parts. Something about this simple process moved me to tears. Later when I had children, I was amazed at how uninhibited they were and started to read wonderful, inspiring books on writing. Books by Brenda Ueland, Dorothea Brande, Julia Cameron, Anne Lamott, John Gardner, Stephen King, even Aristotle. My pump needed much priming, but eventually I stuck my toe in, feeling like a liar as I wrote my first lines in third person. After writing some stories, I took several online courses and started the novel that would become Topping the Willow.

It took me years to produce a first draft. When a knowledgeable friend advised a hefty rewrite, I somewhat illogically chose to try the screenplay format, made easier in the beginning with his help. When my completed effort was named a Semi-Finalist and then a Finalist for a major faith-based screenwriting competition two consecutive years, I realized I wanted to rewrite the novel, this time from my teen protagonist’s point of view. This meant Young Adult … and the journey continues.

The moral of the story? As Winston Churchill so memorably said, “Never never never give up.”