Confessions of a Writer

My name is Heather Mentzer, and I am a writer.

There.  I’ve said it.  In true support group style you have my confession.  I’ve taken the first step towards doing something about it by admitting it, right?  It’s a secret I haven’t told to many people, because talking about it feels awkward.   “What do you write?” they might ask.  Here is where my answers become vague and evasive.  I write fiction:  historical, inspirational fiction, to be exact. 

 I feel like there’s some sort of stigma against writing fiction.  Perhaps it only exists in my mind and is of my own creation.  Maybe it’s because the way I am choose to occupy my time and earn a little income (by teaching sewing classes and writing) seems way outside the American culture’s career-oriented pattern of successful living.  Or perhaps I feel this way because talking to other about what I write forces me to allow them an up-close-and-personal sneak peek of the thoughts that come out of my head.  Scary.  As another author friend once put it, “[Talking about your writing or letting someone read it] is like handing them your heart and waiting for them to stab it.”  I don’t think I would feel this way if I wrote spiffy articles in scientific journals or reported on the news as a journalist.  Then I would sound smart and important.  Writing fiction, though, I am more afraid of sounding silly.  I don't think what I write is silly...but someone else might.

Needless to say it’s taken me several years to get to where I can confess this to more than my absolute closest friends.  I never thought of writing as a career.  However, looking back at my life it is easy to see the desire to write has been there all along.  I “wrote” and illustrated my first story book on the school bus in Kindergarten.  It was some “Ye Old…” western ditty complete with inch-high kindergartener printing and plenty of cow skulls, cacti, and wagon wheels.   An older girl on the bus helped me with some of the pictures.  I think I still have it in a box somewhere.  School writing assignments were always my favorite.  As you can probably tell from my blog, my papers were usually longer than the minimum length requirements.  I’ve always had plenty to write about.  I penned a couple of short story mysteries in junior high, and then started on my first novel in high school.  My sophomore and junior English teacher always wanted us to write in our journals for the first ten minutes of class.  I usually didn’t like the topic she selected, so instead I just started writing a story, with a new installment every day.  Someday I’ll dig out the folder I’ve kept all these juvenile writings in and re-read them, just for laughs.

I knew by high school that I wanted to publish a book.  Being an author wasn’t exactly on the fast-track of career plans I had, however.  It was something to save for later.  So the story sat for five or six years.  Then I got married and moved to Arkansas.  Once again, I didn’t have a full time job, so I found some extra time on my hands.  One morning I sat down at my computer and started to write.  I had a complete story synopsis sketched in an hour.  Filling out the actual dialogue and details takes a lot longer.  I think I usually write one and a half to two pages (single-spaced) in an hour.  The first draft always has room for improvement, so there’s lots editing, and editing, and more editing until I get to the point that I think the story is good enough for someone else to read it.    

I usually don’t suffer from writer’s block.  In fact, story ideas come to me so quickly that it’s hard to keep up with them.  For a while I was getting a new idea every four months.  Right now I have twelve manuscripts in various stages of completion.  That doesn’t include two or three other ideas for an older-elementary mystery series I haven’t even started yet!  Why so many ideas and where do they come from?  I get inspired by lots of things…conversations, books, history programs, events in the lives of people around me.  I play each story out in my mind, dialogue and all, like a movie before I even begin writing.  I attribute my keen story-creation skills to my childhood, when I’d pretend I was a character in some elaborate plot while I was doing my chores or spending long hours checking cows or looking for musk thistle.  Whatever task I was doing always went by quicker and seemed more fun if I made up a story to go along with it.  That’s what I do now.  I think up stories while I drive, while I wash dishes, and while I’m lying in bed trying to fall asleep. 

So where do I go from here?  Several of my manuscripts are to the point they either need to be published (so others can read them) or I need to toss them out the window.  The publishing world is a little intimidating to me.  To self-publish or go the traditional route?  Agent or no agent?  Full-rights to the manuscript or limited rights?  Royalties?  There are lots of questions to consider and decisions to make.  It takes a lot of work just to get your foot in the door.  It’s not quite the romantic “Anne of Green Gables” submit-it-and-win-the-prize picture I’ve always hoped it would be.  The daunting thought of having to wade around in the murky muddle of publishing might be enough to make me throw in the towel here and now, except for the fact that the story ideas are still coming.  I have to do something with them, and they don’t do anyone else any good sitting on my laptop.  So here I go.  It may be frustrating and hard.  It undoubtedly will take time, but I am going to try.  I don’t know where all of this is going to go from here, but I am going to take the first step.  Who knows?  Maybe someday soon you’ll find one of my stories on your bookshelf.