The Day I Decided I was an Author

It’s funny how our idea of success evolves over the years. I remember nearly eight years ago on my 30th birthday, I was leaving the most insanely bizarre star studded night in LA, hobnobbing amongst the most famous of famous, thinking that my life plan was crap. At this time, my dream was to be an actress. I wanted to be in movies, I loved playing make believe and the infinite possibilities of life as an actor. As it turns out, I did not like Hollywood. I have never been any good at games or strategy and that is all that Hollywood is one big chess match of who you know and what someone can give you… I am awesome at singing the praises of something I love, but when it comes to selling for profit, especially myself, I suck. Authenticity goes flying out of the window.

So as I was driving my 100 mile drive back to San Diego, I had the epiphany.  I was going to write. I was taking an online class called Unraveling, run by the brilliant Susannah Conway. And this truth bomb, fit perfectly into the class. I visualized, I manifested, and I simply accepted the fact that what I thought for the past decade about my future was not my calling. When you are a highly sensitive person who finds meaning in everything… Every change of heart, every unplanned event, all matters big and small require a certain gestational period to accept. I had to digest my new path, mourn the loss of the life I thought I was going to lead, while knowing that my new adventure would be a better one.

Even after my revelation, it took me nearly a decade to actually call myself an author. I kept writing anyway, but kept it locked away telling no one. I wrote off and on for those nine years, rarely speaking a word unless it was a self-deprecating joke about how I might have a poorly written novel hidden on my laptop. I was fearful of failure, fearful of what people would say… “Who does she think she is?” “A writer? What could she possibly have to say?”

I might butcher this, but I heard it said recently, “that all it takes to be a writer is to have a blank notecard and a pen in your back pocket.” There’s no class you have to take, no qualifications that you have to acquire to call yourself a writer, yet I’ve always thought of the title as almost “sacred.”  They get to write, they’ve earned it, but really that’s not what it is at all… It’s the willingness to put the words down, to have the notecard in your pocket, or in my case a dozen notebooks in a purse, that makes you an author.

What a relief to finally understand and allow myself the freedom to accept this truth for myself.