Do you believe it takes courage to be a writer?
I do. To be a good writer, you can’t just write and hold it close to your chest. You have to put it out there and accept criticism from readers and other writers. And you have to
believe enough in yourself to put those first words on paper. My mother did a great job of instilling a degree of courage in me. She was notorious for informing me that she had signed me up for this or that activity.
The first was the Youth Crime and Civic Commission. (I wanted to be a spy, and it was the closest thing she could find.) I was irritated, but I soon learned to enjoy the meetings and events. It led to her second brilliant idea. One day she told me I should start writing newspaper articles about the Commission’s activities. She wanted me to call the Kansas City Star and offer to write for them. I was in high school. I thought she’d really gone too far ‘round the bend that time, so I decided to call her bluff. I called them. The receptionist didn’t bat an eye. She put me straight through to the Youth Page editor, who told me to submit an article and he’d look at it. Guess who had to eat crow? I wrote the article, he accepted it, and I wrote regularly for the Youth Page for the next two years until I left for college.
Actually, my experience in journalism started much earlier, in about the sixth grade, when my mother volunteered me to be the reporter for my 4-H club. No one else was willing to run for the position, so naturally I got elected. I had a monthly column in the Johnson County Kansas newspaper. I guess I should mention at this point that my mother grew up around newspaper people. Her mother worked for the Kansas City Kansan, and my mother had her first job for the paper. My dad was a photographer for the paper, and he taught me photography and photo developing, which became my 4-H projects.
The last time my mother enrolled me in something, I came home from school, and just inside the door I was informed I had joined the International Relations Council, a not-for-profit organization in Kansas City. When I attended the first dinner lecture, I was probably the only person there under the age of 50. However, having learned from previous experiences, I kept going. My first professional job was as Assistant to the Director of the International Relations Council.
Unlike my mother’s lessons in imagination, these lessons stuck in my mind when raising my kids, and they both got pushed into any activity I thought would fit with their interests. Matt wrote for a local newspaper during summers off from college, and Ben took piano lessons for almost ten years. In the process, he found out he was one of the gifted few who has “perfect pitch.” Coming from a family with zero musical ability, who would have guessed?
The moral of this story? You never know what your gifts might be until you try something new. Like writing.
