Writing, bringing fame and riches or not...

During mid-term of eighth grade my family moved to Havasu Palms, which was a rustic and remote lakeside resort, then located on Fish and Game lease land, on the border of Arizona and California.

There was a vintage country store on the site, where visitors could purchase bait, ice, gas and groceries. It was my sister and I who normally tended the store on weekends or in the summer.

On slow days, customers would trickled in, leaving large gaps in our day with nothing to do. There was just so much cleaning and stocking to fill the time. There was no television at the store, no telephone, and the Internet was decades away.

My grandfather had given me a manual typewriter, and once I learned to type in my freshman year, I preferred the keys to pen and paper. I was in the midst of writing my first book, The Privilege Ones. And so, it was not uncommon for me to drag the red typewriter to the store, and use my free time writing.

One afternoon a fisherman wandered in to buy bait. He noticed the typewriter and the stack of paper. He asked what I was typing. I explained I was writing a book, and he immediately announced he was a published author. But his announcement was not given as a boast, or even a plug for his book. It was, in some ways, delivered to me as a warning, a cold bucket of water on my dreams.

He laughed, somewhat sardonically, that his book brought him only a few hundred dollars, and his writing career, was not only brief, it was unprofitable.

I never learned if he ever wrote anything again. But, it did (at an early age) make me realize that becoming a published author did not necessarily equate to becoming rich and famous. It also taught me, that my motivation to write must come from a place other than that which craves attention or riches, otherwise my labor might bring me grief and disappointment.

I finished my first book. It was written in first person, sort of; from the perspective of the family dog. It was a little less than eighty pages, and its stack of worn pages are fitted neatly in a drawer in my study. I don’t believe anyone has ever read the manuscript. I certainly never sent it off to a publisher. I can’t imagine there would be much hope in marketing a book written by a young teenage girl.

While my motivation for writing The Privileged Ones may have initially been cheered on by that long ago illusion of writing and fame, it regrouped during the process (thanks to that visiting fisherman), and I discovered I have other reasons for writing.