Living the
Dream: The Life of an Author
But words are things, and a small drop of
ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps
millions, think.
Lord Byron
I decided at a very young age that I wanted to be
a writer. I wanted to be able to give other people knowledge and make them
feel. I wanted to be able to change people, to make them think, to give them
the kind of joy only a good book can do. I wanted to be able to inspire.
I started writing poems and stories in elementary
school. Every year my school took part in the Young Author’s Conference. My
books were chosen several times and I was able to attend the conference and
workshops. When I was eleven, I attended a summer writing program and several
of my poems were chosen to appear in a local magazine. I was hooked. I knew I
wanted to be a writer.
Throughout high school I wrote for the school
newspaper and the teen section “Word Up” of our local newspaper The Flint Journal. During my first years
at college I wrote for the college paper and a local entertainment magazine.
And then life and kids came along and I had to put
my writing on hold because it didn’t pay the bills. I still scribbled things in
notebooks here and there but writing as a career was out of focus.
Bonnie Friedman said “Successful writers are not
the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They
are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most
pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work,
despite the difficulties.”
Eventually it got to the point where the only
thing I write was to-do lists and grocery lists. And that left a strange
emptiness inside me. Writing was supposed to be part of me. I was a writer,
it’s how I identified. But I had ceased to write. I had ceased to dream of
being an author.
Humans have the capacity to dream, to strive for
something better, and to want something more. A dream is part of a person. Left
unfulfilled or at the very least not attempted to fulfill, it can leave a
gaping void in your soul.
Eventually I realized that something was missing.
I realized I had to do something to fill that
emptiness. Everyone should have the chance to live their dreams, if only for a
little while. Life is too short to be left with unfulfilled dreams and it is
never too late to live your dream. I plan to keep writing and striving and
working towards my dreams and my goals. One day I know I will achieve what I
have set out to do.
I came back to writing in 2005 and have been
writing and working in the book world steadily since then.
I love that I now live my dream and have my dream
job. I am a writer at heart and I always will be- and now not only do I write,
but I help others live their dreams as well, by everyday helping authors show
their books to the world.
It’s funny, as a teenager I dreamed of having my
own ‘zine but back then you had to be highly computer literate, have expensive
design programs and be willing to drop a lot on printing costs because at that
time an e-zine (or ebook) was unheard of.
Now here I am twenty years later owning an
operating an internet based company specializing in virtual book tours with one
of our features being an e-zine. I hope you enjoy our Bewitching little place
in the enormous world of books.
And I hope this inspires other hopeful authors and
artists- you never know where your dreams will lead you but you should at least
take the chance and follow them. Let them lead the way.
Henry David Thoreau said it best “Go confidently
into the direction of your dreams! Live the life you always imagined.”
~Roxanne Rhoads
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