You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

That Was Me, For Sure

“So, you wanna be a writer………?”

When I was in high school, I was a nerd. I studied hard, loved reading and writing, and decided I wanted to be a writer. I imagined myself wearing a beret, sitting in a sidewalk café in Paris, and penning beautiful prose that all the world would adore. Merveilleux!

The trouble was I had no idea how to write anything beyond a well-constructed sentence.

In my senior year I was doing well enough that I was given the spring semester off to just…write. Not so marvelous, it turned out. I sat in my room, day after day, staring at a blank piece of paper, having not the slightest idea where to start.

“This Is the Way”

I tried writing a short play. It was terrible. I mean, gagging awful.

I wrote a few saccharine poems.

I worked on a short story, but I really didn’t know where to start it or how to end it. And, wait, did I actually need characters? People doing stuff? I know how to do stuff. Why can’t I just have these pretend people doing stuff?

There was no one to show me the way. How stories work. How to build characters. How to create a scene, and, heaven forbid, write actual real-sounding dialogue.

I wished for a teacher.

The Giving Up Part…

In college, I tried again, but things were even worse. My professors talked about things without ever explaining them. One of them even said, “If you have to ask that question, you’ll never be a writer.”

So I gave up.

I went into science, dove to the sea floor in a submersible, collected rock samples in Newfoundland and the Andean cordillera, went to sea a bunch of times on oceanographic vessels, had a blast, learned a ton, met my husband as a fellow scientist. And then we wrote a bunch of articles together, and those well-constructed sentences came in handy.

And on the side, quietly, I began to try my hand at writing fiction again.

But it wasn’t until years had passed that I had the nerve to cold-call a real, published writer and find my way into an actual writing process.

I think about that call a lot. It was to Kathi Appelt, and it was because a mutual friend who heard me wondering about learning to write and having no idea where to start said, “You should call her. She’ll tell you what to do.”

The Best Part: Learning How to Learn

Kathi did tell me what to do. She told me to join SCBWI and start going to meetings. She gave me lists of books to read. She talked about craft and broke down the mysteries. She persuaded me to go back to school for my MFA in writing. She read my books, gave me feedback, eventually wrote me blurbs when I finally reached the high bar.

What if I’d held back, waiting for a better time to call her? What if I’d chickened out altogether? Or if I didn’t go to the SCBWI meetings because I was too busy, or didn’t go to conferences because they were too difficult?

Without Kathi’s guidance, and honestly, my own bull-headedness, I would not be a published author today, 25 years later.

If that is your dream, I would like to be your Kathi. To break down the mysteries. To show you the way. Because I had no idea what I didn’t know back in the day and if that’s where you are stuck, I can help.

What are you waiting for?

Want To Learn How To Write a Children’s Book?

Pick up a copy of my free download, “3 Tips to Writing Your Children’s Story” right here:

And check out all my courses here.

I Have a Question For You

If I was to offer to read first pages behind a paywall here, would you be interested? And/or have an “ask me anything” behind that paywall? Read your query letter? Discuss writing and break things down?

Let me know in the comments!!