If you write to become famous or, worse, rich, I hope you are ready to wait a couple of lifetimes times five. If you write because you need to open a deep wound that closed before healing to expose and bring out thoughts that cry to be released and set free, then you are one of my people.
One day it happened, I wrote. A friend once told me that gifted people are responsible for securing and keeping safe a gift that could only come from a higher power. As a woman of faith, I do not feel gifted; instead, I feel trusted. God must have more faith in me than I have in myself. His trust in me to nurture and safeguard something as precious and delicate as a newborn, in all honesty, gives me the chills.
Yes, my faith also tells me that to help me care for his precious gift, he brought people into my life to make this honorable job a little easier. I never forget who helped me. How can someone forget the people who gained nothing by helping you but could lose a lot more by giving you their time? These people came into my life specifically with the sole purpose of helping me take care of my gift so that someday I would be writing something like this. My eternal gratitude belongs to Susie Schaefer with Finish the Book Publishing and Stormbringer with The Backward Medicine Way.
Finish the Book Publishing held a booth at this year’s LA Times Festival of Books; I was fortunate to have my book Seven Stories for My Father: Letters of Love and Legacy featured along with the work of many of their talented authors. It feels surreal to see myself on paper, although I sometimes think I have always been on paper in one way or another. Walking through the festival allowed me to see a past version of myself in the different stages of my writing reflected in other authors. All their dreams, hopes, and blurbs sounded and felt familiar.
I walked around eating a mango Mexican popsicle, enjoying a beautiful day while thinking about equality in the amount of our gifts distributed. God must have been busy on our distribution day; there were hundreds of authors present, each taking care of their gift as best as possible. The rest is individual hard work and pure, unfiltered, unadulterated luck.
To my fellow authors, as Stormbringer told me once: Live how your write.
