Risking It All To Chase My Lifelong Dream

When I set out to write my first mystery novel, I said “first, you have to find a nursery rhyme that Agatha Christie hasn’t already used.”

That is a terrible way to start a novel, but at the time, I was about twelve and roller skating through my middle class suburban Indiana neighborhood, so I didn’t really have in-depth knowledge of the subject.

Not surprisingly, that novel never got off the ground, but thirty five years later, I actually completed and published my first mystery novel, Deadly Decaf—no nursery rhymes involved thankfully. But I didn’t reach that milestone until I left a fifteen year career to pursue my lifelong dream.

I realized that if I didn’t put everything into my writing and take a chance, I would regret it.

My first attempt at writing fizzled out, but there were plenty of others through my teens and twenties. Ideas swirled, and I was forever jotting down notes or scraps of dialogue. Some of them developed into stories: a locked door mystery in a bank vault that I had no idea how to solve, a land where magic is real but those who practice it are hunted, a space ship crashing into an interstellar war.

None of them were ever finished, but they were all the result of an impulse, a compulsion to share something, to explain myself, to show how the world is and how it might be. That’s what kept bringing me back to pen and paper and to my keyboard year after year, and that’s why I’m still at it all these years later.

When I did finally finish a project and put it in front of an audience, I found that I could connect to people through storytelling in ways that I couldn’t otherwise. I could share complex ideas. I could evoke emotions. I could create sympathy for and connection to people who don’t exist. I could take people on a ride from an initial starting point through to a satisfying conclusion.

It’s a heady ability.

When it works.

I had some success in college writing plays, and I saw what was possible. Seeing an audience stock still and collectively holding its breath at words I had written… It was exhilarating.

Less so was the time I spent in front of a blank piece of paper.

I’ve always liked to keep paper copies of what I write, and for a very long time, I kept those paper copies in closets, hiding them away. In retrospect, the symbolism is obvious, but I didn’t see it at the time. A few years ago, I finally pulled those papers out of my closets, set them in decorative black 3-ring binders, and added them to my bookshelves.

The stories I wrote up through college filled three shelves. Everything I had written in the two decades since? One measly little half shelf. It was a tangible representation of my writer’s block right there in my living room.

A row of black 3-ring binders in a bookcase that contains the things I wrote in college.

I wanted to write, I could see the stories in my head, but trying to put them on paper was like trying to pull tangled thread out from around a tree branch—it snagged at every attempt.

It felt like that tangled thread was buried deep in my chest and snagged around myself, slowly cutting myself to pieces. The more I tried to pull at it and untangle it, the deeper it cut. Without noticing, I had twisted around myself, like Medusa being strangled by one of her own snakes.

The hardest part was, it was all me. I was drowning in a sea of my own emotions and limitations. I was the epitome of getting in my own way, but that didn’t make it any easier to resolve.

I should have known it the moment I shut those papers away.

I’ve felt the need to blend in to the crowd for the majority of my life. The pressure to put my head down and try to do what everyone else does is very real, and it influenced me. I shut parts of myself away.

And ultimately, It was useless—I’m lousy at blending and despite years of attempting, I never managed to appear remotely "normal." I can look the part, but the moment I open my mouth, I give myself away.

In the attempt, I lost myself, but the self is critical to writing.

At its most fundamental, writing is communication from one individual to another, from point A to point B. If one of those points, one of those individuals is badly defined, how can you travel to or from it? That’s what my writing felt like. I knew where I wanted to go, but not where I was coming from. I couldn’t express myself when I was hiding from myself.

As a result, working on my writing and working on myself, on finding myself, were the same thing, not two separate activities but only the same thing in different forms. It took many years of working on myself, but eventually, I began adding to that little half shelf of 3-ring binders. Then, I had filled that shelf and had to clear off a new one. Before I knew it, I had almost filled it as well.

As delighted as I was at my progress, I began to encounter a new problem. My career was going well and I was having success in my role, but I felt torn between my job and my passion. It had taken so long for me to find success with my writing that I began to resent the time I was putting into my “day job.”

Finally, I realized that I only have so much brain power and the vast majority of that was going to my job, not my passion. If I wanted to pursue my dream, I needed to use that brain power on it. I realized that if I didn’t put everything into my writing and take a chance, I would regret it. So, I gave my notice.

Experts will tell you not to do exactly what I did, and for good reason. I hadn’t made a cent off of my writing when I left my job. I traded financial security for a very uncertain future. But ultimately, it was a decision to embrace myself, all aspects of who I am. Writing is the only way I know how to do that.

I didn’t understand when I made this decision that it isn’t a decision that’s made only once. Every day I decide all over again to pursue my dream, to not return to the nice, safe corporate world. A lot of days, it’s a no-brainer, but there are days when the benefits of my corporate life call to me, and the decision is harder on those days. I’ve learned that I can work through the harder days because overall, it’s worth it. I enjoy my life more when I’m leaning into what I’m passionate about and embracing who I am.

I like to think that my 12 year-old self roller skating through the neighborhood would nod in approval, likely getting up from a scraped knee or sprained wrist but continuing to race down the sidewalk, wind blowing her hair.

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