The Writer I Nearly Wasn't
People are always commenting on my prolific creative output (20 books and five screenplays). But what you might not know is that I was a late bloomer. I didn't start writing my first book, "The MoonQuest," until I was 39, having spent many of the preceding years doing my best to avoid all things creative!
Today, with my latest screenplay wrapped up and delivered (a film adaption of "The Bard of Bryn Doon," the latest installment in my "Legend of Q'ntana" fantasy series), I'm gearing up to start work in earnest on a 21st book and fifth Q'ntana story. I say "in earnest," because although I celebrated 2/2/22 by jotting down an opening scene for the new book, I spent the rest of February finishing up my screenplay.
But before I get to this as-yet-untitled book (about which I know absolutely nothing!), I want share with you something of the personal and creative journey that got me here and made me the writer I am.
Once upon a time, there was a kid who hated writing and was convinced he wasn’t creative. When it came to school, all he wanted was to get through English class and its writing burdens as painlessly as possible.
His Muse had other plans. His Muse had always had other plans. How else can you explain his first typewriter? A gift in his freshman year in high school, it was a sleek, green Hermes — an unusual brand. Hermes, of course, was the Greek god of communication…and, thus, writers. And how can you explain why he agreed, a few years later, to be in charge of publicity for the senior high school musical? It was out-of-character for him to take on anything that involved not only writing but making his writing public.
I like to joke that my Muse tricked me into becoming a writer, and that’s how it began — with that typewriter and the publicity gig.
From high school musical press releases, I graduated into college musical press releases, gaining enough renown in local theater circles that I found myself freelancing as a theater publicist. Suddenly, I was being paid to write!
From college, I went to work at a dynamic public relations startup. It was still mostly press releases, but I was writing. Unfortunately, the startup wasn’t dynamic enough. Less than a year later, I was laid off.
It was my next p.r. job that accelerated my transformation into a full-time writer. Not only did I prepare press releases as, first, an information office and, later, assistant director of public relations for Montreal's Concordia University, I wrote news and feature articles, something I had never done before. And thanks to the media contacts I gained on the job, I began freelancing on the side, thrilled to see my byline in major metropolitan dailies and national magazines. After a few years of that, I converted my side gig into a full-time one. To my astonishment, I was supporting myself as a writer and editor.
My writer’s story could have ended there, but it didn’t…nor did the behind-the-scenes machinations of my Muse.
You see, I still refused to see myself as creative. A skilled artisan with words, perhaps. But certainly not creative.
That changed one Monday morning during a simple water-cooler conversation. I was working in-house as a freelance magazine editor when one of the staffers corralled me.
“I’ve just taken this amazing creative writing workshop,” she gushed. “You’ve got to take it.”
In a moment as out-of-character as the one when I agreed to run publicity for my high school Hello, Dolly!, I said yes.
Nothing was ever the same for me after that workshop.
Thanks to the instructor — to both her workshops and her mentoring — I discovered that I was creative. I started to go deeper with my writing, to write from my heart instead from my head. And soon I was teaching my own writing workshops.
It was in one of those workshops that my Muse gave me a gigantic push. After leading participants through a writing exercise, I did another out-of-character something: I did the exercise myself, in class.
What emerged was the first scene of a story that I not only knew nothing about but had no conscious desire to write.
No conscious desire…but a profound inner call. Author Madeleine L’Engle once said, “I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write [A Wrinkle in Time]. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice.” Apparently, nor did I. It was a story I had to write, and it became The MoonQuest — my first book and the one that finally launched me into the writer I am today. (As it turned out, the Sara character in my novel Sara's Year felt pretty much the same way!)
What’s the takeaway if you're a writer or want to be? There are several, and they’re all related.
Listen to your heart.
Trust your intuition.
Listen for the stories you can’t not tell…and tell them.
Write what you’re passionate about.
Ignore everyone who insists that you write a certain way or avoid certain kinds of stories.
And READ…anything and everything! I may have started out as a reluctant writer, but I was a voracious reader. Reading not only expands us as human beings, it teaches us our craft…in the easiest, most fun way possible: by osmosis.
As I put it in my second book, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, “the more you read great writing, the more you will understand what makes it great...without having to dissect, analyze or try to figure anything out. You will simply know, and that knowingness will find its way into your writing, often unconsciously.
I learned some of those takeaways from my mentor. I learned even more from Madeleine L’Engle. L’Engle received two years’ worth of rejections from 26 publishers (including her own) for A Wrinkle in Time, which, once it was finally published, went on to win major awards and be translated into more than a dozen languages. That’s because she wrote the book she had to, not the book others (including her publisher) thought she ought to.
That’s how I have written all my books, including The MoonQuest, which, like A Wrinkle in Time became the kickoff for a popular fantasy series I never planned to write: The Legend of Q'ntana. In fact, I’m about to start work on a fifth Q'ntana book right now…so I’d better get to it. Because, in the end, that’s what a writer does: A writer writes!
• Read more about my creative journey in “Acts of Surrender: A Writer's Memoir”
• While you're waiting for Q'ntana Book #5, catch up on the first four here
• Ready to launch or deepen your own creative journey? Look for "The Voice of the Muse” and my other books and recordings for writers here
Photos: #1 - Me, working at the Starbucks in Newport Coast, CA, where I wrote large chunks of “The StarQuest,” “Acts of Surrender” and “Pilgrimage: A Fool's Journey” and small chunks of The Bard of Bryn Doon; #2 - My first typewriter, a green Hermes. #3 - Photographer Kathleen Messmer captured me at Albuquerque's Chocolate Dude as part of a photo shoot for the cover of “Writer's Block Unblocked: Seven Surefire Ways to Free Up Your Writing and Creative Flow”
Still Relevant After All These Years
Although I began writing The MoonQuest in 1994 (it was published in 2007), I continue to be astounded by how relevant readers still find it.
Through the Bush and Trump eras to events now unfolding in the Ukraine, this fantasy quest story written largely in a Nova Scotia backwater still speaks to the political machinations, nationalist aggression and authoritarian suppression that continue to play out on the world stage. At the same time, it speaks to the indomitable human spirit that never ceases to offer hope through troubled times.
I'm often asked which of my 20 books is my favorite. Although it's like asking a parent to choose a favorite child, I have to confess that it's probably The MoonQuest, not only because it was my first-born but because it's a story that is always current and that never stops reminding us of the transformational, transcendent and enduring power of creativity and imagination.
Mind you, I suppose that could be said of all the books in my Legend of Q’ntana series. As the Bard of Bryn Doon says in the latest Q'ntana book, the one that bears his name, "Stories are mightier than any other wizardry. Nothing in Prithi’s creation can rival their magic."
It may seem trite to say this, especially in these times. Yet true, lasting peace can only begin within.
At the same time, my heart goes out to all those in the Ukraine who struggle valiantly against a brutal, unwarranted invasion precipitated by a man with no peace in his heart, a man with no vision beyond his ego’s. It goes out, too, to all those in Russia who oppose both the invasion and its instigator.