When did you first feel the pull to write?

Me, I was about 4.

I “wrote” my first book by stapling construction paper together and squiggling lines on the pages inside.

My grandmother, who took care of us most days, would sit at the counter writing (journal, letters), and my sister was a bookworm even at 6. So I assume I was mimicking my role modes.

After that, I made more books out of construction paper and staples. Eventually I even used words!

When I learned to read and write, I filled notebook after notebook. When we got a computer, I began writing novels. And somewhere along the line, I began hiding my writing. I thought it was embarrassing and dumb. I wouldn’t even talk about it.

In college, I avoided creative writing classes, though in my dorm room at night I would click-clack away, writing poems and short stories and essays.

After graduation, an AmeriCorps position in Rochester, NY led me to a women’s prison, where I co-led creativity workshops. One of the activities was candidly answering the question:

What would you do, if you could do anything?

The women answered all sorts of dreamy things: “I’d be an ER nurse.” “I’d be a stay-at-home mom.” “I’d be a professor.”

Then they asked me. For the first time, I said it out loud:

“I’d be a writer. I would write novels.”

They didn’t laugh at me. They smiled and said encouraging things, and that night, I started writing about the idea that had lately been floating around my head: What if an old man hired a struggling artist to paint his dreams? What would happen?

And my first novel was born.

*

It’s strange, how we sometimes hide the thing that lights us up.

Especially when it requires being vulnerable. And if we don’t know anyone else who’s doing it.

It’s easy to feel insecure about writing.

As David Mitchell said, showing someone your writing is like lying down in a coffin and handing them a sharpened stake.

But with time, as we grow in confidence, we can learn to take that light out from under a bushel, as the saying goes, and let it shine.

*

When did you first feel the call to write?

Did you show it to the world right away, or did you hide it?

I’m Kimberly, and I’m a ghostwriter and book coach who specializes in novels and memoirs with themes of relationships, mental health, and spirituality.

If you could use some structure, guidance, and support as you write your book, or someone to do the actual writing, send me a message.