On becoming a writer

 

At four I wanted to write stories that were sequels (I didn't know the word then) to the stories my grandmother and mother read to me daily. With my crayons I'd scribble about Reddy Fox, Old Grandfather Frog, Flossie and Freddy Bobbsey.

The problem?

I couldn't write, therefore I couldn't read my scribbles the next day. 

During my bath, my mother and I would tell double stories where she would start with one or two sentences then I would take over and after a few minutes hand it back to her until we came to an end. My favorite character was a philanthropic snake.

Still not able to read and write, I verbally described what I saw such as "the coals in the fireplace were red." 

That wasn't enough so I started saying things like, "she said," "he said," "the father said after people around me spoke."

That came to an end the day my grandmother and I walked out to get the mail. I laughed and said, "the little girl said laughingly, holding the fat cook's hand." Granted my grandmother did most of the cooking, but she didn't like being called fat. My parents, usually supportive of my imagination, asked me to keep my writing thoughts to myself.

In grade school I wrote mysteries solved by six imaginaryfriends. In 4th grade I started a newspaper for my class and from my junior year in high school, I was a cub reporter for the Lawrence Eagle Tribune. My editor growled lessons, I still use decades later. 

Most of my writing thru uni was academic. When I married and living in Stuttgart with my husband who was in an Army band, I tried writing. There was only pen and paper, plenty of things to observe every where starting out my window on Olga Strasse such as the horse-drawn wagon used for beer deliveries. I just couldn't come up with plots.

Back in the States there were years of just living, a daughter, a divorce, and writing about new businesses, pamphlets, advertising and press releases, renovating a house and grad school, I had no time for fiction.

My housemate tired of hearing "I want to write fiction" asked "What's stopping you?"

The answer was me.

Writing was easier with an IBM Selectric. 

Neighbors who were interested in the Cathar heretics triggered, my desire to fictionalize Emmanuel La Durie's book Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324. Having almost no French, I headed for the Pyrenees. What an experience standing in a 1300 church in a tiny village and know that the mother of the heretic priest had been buried there in the 1300s. 

Despite winning an award for an unpublished novel, I only had rejections for Heretics and Lovers. Much, much later I would use part of the priest who headed the Cathar inquisitions and would become Pope Benedict XII in Murder in Paris as the historical section in my Murder in Paris.

Doubting my abilities, I attended the Paris Writers Workshop where Canadian writer Isabel Huggan encouraged me to keep writing. Thanks to her encouragement, I did.

A neighbor who dressed as a carrot and gave nutrition lessons to kids, triggered the idea for Chickpea Lover: Not a Cookbook, which covered sexual harassment issues at colleges. The novel won a prize and was published in German and Russian too.

Meanwhile, I was writing short stories that were published in various literary magazines. One of my proudest moments was when my short story Letting Go being read on BBC radio.

I've now published 19 fiction books and three non-fiction including one on the history of abortion. 300 Unsung Women, short bios of women who have fought gender bias in many disciplines, is in the final printing process and an anthology of my short stories and poems, The Corporate Virgin, is working will be available in summer.

Most of my neighbors in my small French village where I now live part time didn't know I wrote until France 3 did a small segment, calling me the Agatha Christie of Argelès.

At this point of my life, I cannot not write. Stories, blogs, essays, descriptions come to me, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes from something I hear or see. Writing is as much a part of me as my love of lobster, love of my husband, love of my dog, not necessarily in that order. Almost every day my fingers touch my keyboard and produce words, many of which are filed away never to be seen, some which will appear in blogs or other sites, and a few which will end up in books.

It's enough. I became a writer.

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