Today I am pleased to welcome my friend, Heather Clift, to Great Thoughts’ Great Writers. Heather is currently working on finally completing a first novel after four false starts. When she isn’t staring at the blinking curser, she can be found encouraging others in a variety of venues, reading, or folding laundry.
Here’s Heather:
I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was in first grade.
The elementary school allowed all students to submit a short story for some sort of contest. My memory is a bit foggy on the details, but I clearly remembering losing to the same girl three years in a row. The last year I participated – third grade—I secretly accused her mother of writing it. Imagine my internal angst when that story won at the state level.
All thoughts of being any kind of writer were thrown away.
A few years later, in a new school district, I had an English teacher that re-ignited my love of all that is creative. She also inspired my love of grammar and mechanics, although any mistakes you see are my own.
That hope remained alive until high school when one particularly nasty English teacher said I had absolutely no skill or ability for writing and gave me a D on my semester project. She didn’t just kill my hopes; she murdered them, chopped them up in little pieces, burned them, and then splashed acid on the remains.
What I didn’t know at the tender age of seventeen, is that writing is a creative process. Anything that is creative is subjective. What one person hates, ten other people may love it. Also, I had no other encouragement, so I based my decision to pursue writing on the opinion one person with a red pen and my transcript.
Fast forward a few decades, and I’ve learned a lot. Besides the subjectivity factor, there has to be some self-accountability and determination. It would seem logical that people are still driven by encouragement even as adults, but I have no research to back that up. Whatever it is, I have found my circle of like-minded individuals that help me along with my desire of being a writer.
Scratch that. I need to keep reminding myself: I AM a writer.
I’ve had three short stories published, two of which were for a statewide competition through the honor’s society. I placed first one year and second the next. Recently, I entered a shortstory completion on a whim, and as part of the submission process, had to
be self-published into an ebook.
So, if we’re keeping score, that’s four short stories published already.
But, as my college English professor, who brought my writer-self back from the dead , reminded me weekly, publication doesn’t make you a writer: “Writers write. That makes you a writer.”
Remember that nasty teacher from high school? Seems to me like she was wrong. Subjectively, speaking of course.
What are you reading and where are you going?