When she was a little girl, she said she wanted to be an author. She didn't want to be a ballerina or cow girl. Maybe an actress would do, for she had quite a flair for the dramatic.

But to the world, she was so shy, cripplingly shy, and she had very low, self-esteem. She didn't dare to dream too much, for she couldn't imagine really doing anything that could draw attention to herself. She often just wanted to hide, and her imagination accompanied her in her world.

She remembered her grade school teacher reading to her class about Abraham Lincoln. She came home that day, and somehow she wrote it just as well as she could remembrer it, with her own pictures, too. Her mother was so impressed that she bragged to everyone that her daughter wrote it all on her own, out of her own head. It must have looked that convincing to her mother.

But as she grew older, the girl didn't ever give herself permission to write something, even when it was required in school to write a poem. It was daring. She could be made fun of.

How could someone like you do that?

She wasn't unintelligent. She had a good command of the English language. She even went to college and earned a degree, the only one out of three children. But she had her heart set on psychology.

When she moved away from home in her twenties, she suddenly flourished. She took community education classes in painting, and had no idea she really could pull of what she did. Painting felt so free, like such an accomplishment. It felt good to create, to work with her hands.

And then she was on a roll. She began to write, and you just couldn't stop her. Most of her writing was pretty good, and some of her work was not to her liking. Years later she would read them again, and she could see that some so-so ones could be salvaged, or the better ones could even be better yet by fixing some of them up. She once thought she had reached her peak, but when the roller coaster of life brought her new thoughts, she was on another roll.

She wanted to be a published author, but she learned that it really wasn't about being well-known. She tried to publish some poems, but she learned that no matter what she did, she was still an author. Whether she was doing it for living, or for the love of writing, she was still a writer. She was what that little girl wanted to be, but who was terrified it could happen more than she was terrified that it wouldn't come true.

Her ultimate dream was to write a novel. Her uncle, very close in age, was angry at her for writing what he thought was a fantastic draft of a novel. She tore it up, for it was way over her head. And did this all without the help of a computer, scribbling away in notebooks. and haphazard means, that she could even barely read. Her penmanship was never very good.

Imagination has always been a good guide, fueling her with scenerios in her head about people that she had invented, that she had created, with bits and peaces of real life experiences and observations. But translating her thoughts to paper were often a challenge, not always easy to portray as she had thought of them. She surely had a gift, and she didn't think she really deserved it. She took one writing class, and she seemed to do well. But she didn't pursue it much further than a single class, and a few poetry readings.

Someone she knew from her church had got on her case for not writing every day.

You have a gift, and you aren't using it. God gave you that gift".    

"Well, let Him take it away", she retorted to the accusation.

But it would not be taken away. Writing was a catharsis, when life got too heavy. It was an escape, a place she could design her own world--at least on paper.  It was a way to feel freedom and expression that did not come so easily in life. It brought her such satisfaction when done to her approval, when good feedback came.

No, she would not write everyday. She was not a machine, but she knew she would never want writing to be taken away or denied her. That, scared, little girl that once declared that she wanted to be an author never really went away, for her desires were not fickle, not a passing fancy.  

So even if she did not have anything published, sitting on a store bookshelf. thanks to the internet, she has been able to share her thoughts, her fears, her hopes, her dreams, her disappointments--her words on display.

She knows she is in good company.