Here's as much as I remember...
Something something something
Something something something
I waved to my sister.
I waved to my cat.
The plane took off,
Sis and cat in it.
They were out of sight,
In less than a minute.
I don't remember being particularly chuffed about it, but the very fact that I *remember* any of it at all speaks volumes. Even now I am impressed. Pretty clever, rhyming "in it" with "minute."
I realize now that it was my first attempt at writing fiction. I do have a sister who flew off to college, but alas, no cats. Ever. (Or dogs. Only a duckling I won at a carnival and a short-lived turtle.) And seriously, there's no way I could have seen my sister ON the plane when I wasn't going with her, even in the days before TSA. So maybe: aspirational fiction?
I didn't publish again until decades later when I was teaching methods of teaching elementary school math at a local college. I placed a few articles in The Arithmetic Teacher. And I got an op-ed piece accepted in the Boston Globe. It was about the burnout teachers experience when, as they did in those days, they got a "pink slip" each June notifying them they've been RIFFED (Reduction in Force) and had to wait until September to find out if they had a job or not. Happy times. Easy to walk away from a career, even if you love the work, which I did.
I hit the big time with a runner-up submission to a Redbook Magazine writing competition. I wrote about being married to a man who is as klutzy and accident-prone as I am. It was emphatically NON-fiction and I wish I could find it.
I only realize in retrospect that he's always been my muse.
Looking back, I can see that I was taking baby steps toward becoming a writer while I was having my babies and working 'real' jobs. For me it was a journey, not an MFA.
What were your baby steps? Or were you one of the lucky ones who came out of the chute knowing exactly what you wanted to be and doing it?
Your little poem is so sweet . . .
ReplyDeleteI always knew I wanted to teach, so I didn't wander far from whatever was necessary to reach that goal.
Wishing Jerry much improved health, Hallie.
ReplyDeleteI had a lifetime of working with words before I got back to writing the fiction I'd abandoned as a teenager. I know it was all prep for this, my last and best career, but I wish I'd abandoned non-fiction (journalism, academic writing, essays, tech writing) earlier!
You have certainly made up for lost time, Edith!
DeleteMy first publication was when I was nine. I won a Pasadena Star News children's fictoin contest for my short story, “Viking Girl” and walked away with the prize money of $2.00!
Delete(fiction)
DeleteHallie, know that we all wish your sweet husband well. Take care both of you!
ReplyDeleteI always adored the "specialists" when I was teaching. They came with ideas and methods!
Your first poem is sweet. My paper has published a couple of my letters. One was after they endorsed Bush for president. The only sentence they left out was the one where I suggested that the editors didn't read the news or they'd have made a different choice.
Sending healing vibes to Jerry, and peace and calm to you both, dear Hallie.
ReplyDeleteLove the poem, and the story behind it.
I always wanted to create wonderful clothing. As far back as I can remember I noticed what women wore, and fabrics of all kinds. Pretty sure I was not quite ten when I started designing outfits, and I remember enjoying the descriptions of bridal gowns and "going away" outfits in the local paper's wedding announcements. Then writing my own. My obsession with learning everything there was to know about sewing started then.
Are you back from your big trip, Karen? I hope all went well!
DeleteNot yet, we leave Kenya in ten hours, then have a 30-hour journey. But we've had an amazing trip, thank you. I'll post photos on Facebook when we get home.
DeleteSafe travels.
DeleteThank you!
DeleteLove this story Karen, and safe travels!
DeleteSafe travels, Karen. I can't wait to hear about your trip. I think you should be a "guest traveler" here one morning;-)
DeleteSafe travels, Karen!
DeleteSending love and hugs to you and Jerry, Hallie.
ReplyDeleteMy story is much like Edith's. I began writing very early but abandoned fiction writing after high school. I bounced around in a lot of careers and jobs and did a lot of nonfiction writing over the following decades until I rediscovered my fiction storytelling voice in the early 2000s. Now I look back at all those careers and jobs as fodder.
Best wishes to you and your husband,Hallie. And I think you hit a nerve here today. Lots of us with early writing dreams - I had a story published on the readers page of the national Girl Scout magazine in jr.high- who let them go for a long time. I think Annette nailed it - we needed more experience,more fodder to kick our imaginations into gear. Plus the understanding- finally! - that this was IT,the right road for us.
ReplyDeleteI love this blog today Hallie! I really think you're almost ready to write your memoir...
ReplyDeleteMy first writing was also a poem. It started something like this:
Our flag is a wonderful, glorious thing,
I hope it will fly forever...
I love this Hallie! Cute photo, too.
ReplyDeleteI knew from the time I read Little Women that I wanted to be a writer. The first thing I wrote was a poem - it had the immortal phrase "Pop, pop, pop, here comes the cop." I guess I was destined for a life of crime writing from the git go :) The path has been far from straight and it's only now, in my "twilight" years that I've begun to devote myself to the craft full time.
Hallie, best wishes for a speedy recovery for Jerry.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I wrote anything in elementary school. I do know my best friend and I collaborated on a cartoon in junior high (she drew, I wrote the captions). I wrote some really bad urban fantasy. I wrote for my high-school yearbook.
When I got to college, I wrote for the campus newspaper (sports). When I graduated, I intended to teach, but instead found myself in the tech writing space (no teaching jobs). I've been there ever since. I didn't get serious about fiction until 2011, when I lost that tech writing job.
The rest is history.
Good Morning Hallie et al. May Jerry be well. I am still a wanna be fiction writer. Thanks to my time btl, here my book reviewing has restarted. I think it is interesting that many of us (myself included) wrote poetry as children. Perhaps this is one of the markers for entering the craft?
ReplyDeleteOh, maybe I’m the outlier. It almost never crossed my mind. I was a big reader, of course, and loved mysteries… But I thought it might be more fun to be Sherlock Holmes than write about Sherlock Holmes. It wasn’t until I was 55 but I just had a good idea! I thought: this is a book. And there it was.
ReplyDeleteOf course as a television reporter, I had been writing stories for 30 years by that time. So… I had some practice.
Hank, you're not an outlier. I dabbled until I thought "No seriously, I'm going to write a book" in 2011 when I was 38.
DeleteThe one thing I knew for sure was that I did not want to teach! I was studying Home Economics and could see myself working in a test kitchen and/or writing for a magazine like Good Housekeeping. But the way life worked out was I spent more than 30 years teaching! Only 2 years were teaching home economics because those jobs were very rare. After having my children and doing a bit of substitute teaching, where I learned way more than I ever learned in college I got my master's and became a Reading Teacher. The only work I have ever had published, besides letters to the editor, was a tip in American baby magazine.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes to Jerry!
ReplyDeleteWhen my daughter was into MG Mary Downing Hahn books, I tried writing one, having no idea what I was doing. I found the first chapter while I was purging the garage. I obviously had no idea what I was doing, but still use the location in my current writing.
Sending healing vibes your way for Jerry, Hallie...
ReplyDeleteI think the act of writing is different from the sense of identity one can have as a writer: Doing it vs being it. When the 'being it' gains strength, then the 'doing it' takes off in the direction the writer actively chooses and, oh happy day, can result in being a published author.
Hallie. So sorry your husband is ill. That must be so stressful. Sending you love and every wish for his speedy recovery. I love this post, and that poem, so much. I started out at 12 writing songs and had one recorded at 19...
ReplyDeleteMuch love to you and Jerry and your girls. xo
ReplyDeleteRhys: I think this is a great time to write your memoir, Hallie! I also wrote a poem when I was very young. I don’t remember writing it but my mother kept it
ReplyDeleteColor
Color is a lovely thing to help our sight
Blue for sky
Green for grass
Brown for the road on which we pass
And black for night
You can see even then I was avant-garde, writing a five line stanza!
Sorry. I can’t get Google yo change me from Junglereds
DeleteRhys, I love this! Diana
DeleteHugs and to you and Jerry, Hallie. I love your poem, and the photo!
ReplyDeleteI started writing poetry in junior high, but I don't think I ever imagine myself being "a writer." My uncle was a well-known writer and I always had it drummed into me that that was not a sensible way to make a living!
In my twenties I submitted a few little stories to Woman's World--no idea what they were about!! And then years later I had an idea for a crime novel, and I wrote it just to see if I could. No one was more surprised than me when it sold.
My uncle was a published author, too, Debs, but there were always murmurings about how his father's wealth had something to do with keeping the family afloat!
DeleteI love it, Hallie. When I was six, I found my mom’s portable red typewriter and started a very profitable family newspaper where I essentially ratted out my half siblings (they were much older) and sold it to my mom for 25 cents - candy money :) proving I have always been a sugar motivated writer.
ReplyDeleteJenn,
DeleteI love this story.
Diana
Jenn, you crack me up. We better watch out for the Jungle Reds newspaper...
DeleteNot only did I not come out of the chute knowing what I wanted to do, I'm still trying to figure it out, and I'm in my mid-40's.
ReplyDeleteMark, you started a book blog, right?
DeleteThat is impressive!
Diana
I did. And thank you.
DeleteBut since I can't get that to pay the bills, I have to figure something else out, and that's what I haven't figured out yet. :)
Hallie, I love that poem that you wrote about your sister. I bet she loved it! I wondered if you and your sisters got the writing gene from your parents since they were writers too, right?
ReplyDeleteI've always written as long as I can remember. My first memory is collecting movie clippings and putting together a "newspaper" with invented stories and a comic strip with my drawings when I was about eight years old. I remember writing a daily journal for my sixth grade class and the teacher noticed that some of them were invented stories. LOL. Either non fiction or fiction stories were fine as long as we wrote something in the journal.
There were times in my life when I wrote and wrote then other times when I did not write except for my classes. I have to remind myself to write every day. Though I write here in the comments on JRW and once in a while on Instagram, I feel that I need to write more, as in my novel in progress.
When I write, I can create whatever I want, right?
Diana
Hallie, I hope that your husband feels better soon! Diana
ReplyDeleteHallie, although you enjoyed teaching and it's such an important job, I'm glad you found your way to writing fiction. I hope Jerry is feeling better. I always enjoy his drawings you share with us here. In fact, I wish you'd share more of them.
ReplyDeleteThe innate passion I had/have is love of reading and books (as in reading and also possessing). I did get a degree in English and taught for a while, and I do have a reading blog now, but I am really still waiting to find my "calling." Yes, I'm 67, but I believe it's just around the corner.
Now I'm trying to reverse engineer what the first lines in that poem might have been. It had to end with something that rhymed with sight, and something that rhymed with minute. OR something with sister and something with cat.
ReplyDeleteAnd your in it/minute. rhyme was pretty sophisticated!
Heart-felt poem of parting <3 My little sis tried hard to convince me I didn't NEED to go to college.
ReplyDeleteThen the dreaded RIFing of teachers. We were told a year from our degrees that there wouldn't be job, the bursting of the baby boom. I worked at Prudential from '72-'80, then two years in a district that gave dismissal letters to all non-tenured teachers, with no plans to rehire in September. A tenured colleague told me to be grateful and find a better district. ;-)
I've not published much, but I've written poems and stories and articles, and helped many students do the same. <3
I'm sorry to hear about your husband--hope he's on the mend. I remember my baby steps -- the first being bad poetry. Except I received my first positive feedback during high school for a Shakespearean-style sonnet (iambic pentameter!). My teacher loved it and passed it on to other teachers, one of whom told me that she'd framed it and hung it in her bathroom. Bathroom! Now that's an honor! :-)
ReplyDeleteOops, late to the party! I also had an early (ish) poem recognized, in this case by my middle school English teacher, Al Marshall. I wrote a poem - I wish I had a copy, and unlike Hallie, I don't have it by heart - and he was so impressed he put it on the bulletin board of the teachers lounge and wrote above it, "Don't say our students don't have talent." (Very rural, underfunded school.)
ReplyDeleteI've obviously never forgotten the incident, and it gave me the confidence, from that moment onward, that I was a writer. A good writer.
what an amazing story about an amazing teacher...
DeleteI love that, Julia.
DeleteJulia, I was late to the party again this morning. What a wonderful story about your teacher. I do not think poetry is my forte though I do enjoy creating stories...
DeleteDiana
No Redbook archives to check?
ReplyDeleteGood health wishes to your husband.
ReplyDeleteLike many, I wrote my first short story *very short" in first grade, but I had been making up stories in my head before that. Somewhere along the line to writing, I got derailed by a lack of confidence, so I took other career paths, but used writing in those jobs and writing skits, etc. for community projects. And then one day, with a lot of prodding, passion won out.
In high school I wrote a story set in Renaissance Rome. Since it starred members of the Borgia family, it involved plenty of violent deaths. First sign, perhaps, that I was destined to write crime fiction someday.
ReplyDelete