Rachel Taylor

Five days before my fiftieth birthday I finally published my first work. During most of the time spent writing it, I hardly believed it was anything that anyone would actually see. Then i went through the seven stages of writing which I'm pretty sure include excitement, inspiration, self doubt, self loathing, fear, resignation, and finally who cares combined with whatever. It will neither make me nor break me, and I tell myself that nothing tangible in my life will be affected if 1,000 people read my books or if no-one does. I started writing when I was about 7 or 8 I guess. Stories, poems, basically anytime I had an idea, I'd write about it. My grandmother always fawned over my writing. She read everything I wrote and was constantly telling me that someday I was going to be a famous writer. My grandmother was also always drunk. I don't think in the 17 years I knew her, I ever saw her sober so it was a little difficult to take her opinion of my writing very seriously. I also didn't like her very much. Probably because of the drunk thing. Growing up I was intelligent but a rebel, and my grades sucked in high school. I also found that I hated English, so when I was told that I needed 4 years at a minimum to become a writer, that was a big no for me. My real love was music anyway, but I never did anything with that either. I stopped writing after high school. I got pregnant, had a baby, got married, had another baby. No time, no desire, no reason. Life went on the way it tends to do, and then the internet happened. When social media started it gave people a platform, and that's always a good and bad thing. I was not immune to jumping onto that soapbox and high fiving myself. It took me a while to go from bloviating to finding my voice and I started to realize that I was using it to express myself with more than just myself in mind. Still, the thought of writing anything but what could be only loosely described as essays seemed ridiculous. I mean, what did I have to say, and why would anyone care? It seemed like social media was a captive audience, and my thoughts were not worthy of being chased. Fast Forward to years later, when I found myself struggling for some creative outlet. Things were happening in my life; big changes, and I was desperate to express them. I started to write about them as captions on Instagram and Facebook and I was being truthful. I was being true to myself and to what I was expressing and it felt good. Strangely enough I started getting some positive feedback from those reading these short snippets of my streams of consciousness. One day I was driving home from work and at a stoplight I got a scathingly brilliant idea. I am positive that the guy in the car next to me actually saw the lightbulb go on over my head. By the time I got home I was already formulating a plan and I started writing immediately. Ideas that I had long said someone else should write about now became mine to write about, and so I wrote. I made it through the seven stages of writing my novella, Nothing Left To Lose with only a few bumps and bruises, and am now working on my second book; a novel. I'm not quite sure how this will all go. I may very well suck, and get told so in no uncertain terms by people who have nothing to lose by either being spiteful or honest. Or I may make a million dollars. Or I might stay poor, just enjoy it and not care what anyone thinks. Regardless, here I am, and if you're reading this so are you.