I was 23, married less than a year, and pregnant with my first child. I’d traveled solo across the country and supported myself for a number of years so I knew I could do anything.

The world was mine for the taking, and I wanted to take it as a writer!

It only made sense. I’d always had an overwhelming desire to write, a desire I’d never been able to shake.

So I got out my pencil and paper (computers weren’t so prevalent then) and began to write the book that would define me. Writing was what I’d been born for, it was my destiny.

Unfortunately, though I had ideas galore, I no knowledge of what to do with them. I’d written songs, prayers, cards, and short stories most of my life. Never anything very long. That jump from a couple-page story to a book was of the daredevil type. It was at least twice as wide as the Grand Canyon and three times as deep.

Or at least, that’s how it looked to me. There was an abyss separating me and my chosen career. An abyss that I couldn’t overcome without help.

Which is why my next step, after several months floundering around like a goldfish who had gotten too sassy and jumped out of her bowl, was to sign up for a writing course.

When the box containing the course materials arrived I was ecstatic. I ripped open the box with the same enthusiasm I’d used to open my Christmas presents when I was five.

Here were the blueprints to book writing, to my future. This box contained everything I required to build the bridge to my writing career. I simply needed to complete the course and all that lovely knowledge would be transferred from the box into my brain.

I sighed with happiness and dug in.

I only had time to write one short story before I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. And as I held her in my arms the world shifted.

That craving to write, the one that had overwhelmed me from the first time I’d picked up a pencil, melted away.

All that mattered was my family. Writing could wait.

I didn’t think about writing as a career again until my fourth and youngest child went through that miraculous third grade transformation from little kid to big kid. As soon as she no longer needed my constant, undivided attention that old desire to write came back with a vengeance.

That’s the year I began writing Braumaru, my first book. A book I truly believe I couldn’t have written before I had kids.

Go figure!