So one afternoon, while Little Lenny Lisper repeated his sneaky snake sounds, my mind wandered off to one of my favorite places, a beautiful lake deep in the heart of the Piney Woods of East Texas, and a what-if story began to unfold. I’d always been an avid reader – from the not-so-naughty tales of Barbara Cartland to the steamy romances of Judith McNaught. I’ve always loved love.
Once Little Lenny completed his Sneaky Snakes, his Laughing Lions, and his Roaring Rhinos, I patted his head and sent him on his way, cancelled the rest of my life-or-death appointments, and locked the door to my office. The story poured out of me like water from the womb. And after it was written, I felt like I’d birthed a babe. A romance babe, to be exact.
The story of a young widow who inherits her great-grandmother’s estate on the shores of a beautiful lake, and the cocky attorney sent to oversee the renovations. Ahhhhh.
I went to the one person I knew would give me an honest opinion.
My mother.
Well, maybe not the most unbiased opinion, but that’s not what I wanted anyway. My mother honestly believes that anything I do is wonderful. (Case in point, she still listens to a tape I made when I was sixteen-years-old singing worship hymns and says my voice is “angelic.”) So, on a car trip to visit my grandmother, not far from that East Texas lake that had sparked a daydream during that fateful therapy session, I read her my story. With tears streaming down her face, and her lips quivering, my mother smiled. “Honey, I love it! It’s wonderful! You’ve got to write it.”
And so began my career as a writer.
As most first-time writers do, I wrote, rewrote, read books on writing, took some classes, begged family members to read it , quit, started writing again, and so on and so forth. But I did what many writers never accomplish – I finished it. And I sent it off. Ten years later, two kids later, four books later, and two agents later, I’m still honing my craft. But in the process, I’ve learned a lot about myself. Writing is part of who I am. It makes me a better mother and wife. A better person. Writing feeds my soul. I’m grateful each day for the opportunity to write, and I hope that my stories will touch others, and give them an escape from the Lenny Lisper moments in their lives.
Lest you think I was not punished for my lack of attention to Lenny, God has blessed me with two boys who require extensive speech therapy. Correction. Expensive speech therapy.