I didn’t know that I had any real inclination to be a writer until I was a freshman at the University of Texas, Austin, and I had an English class where we had to produce a 500-word essay weekly. Our first topic (and the only one I remember) was to write an essay on John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty,” and I distinctly recall having no clue how to go about that process. In high school, I don’t remember writing many essays, and if I did, they were tossed out with half a thought. But when I arrived at UT, I was eager to shift away from the heavy extra-curricular life I’d had in high school and actually start learning. It was as if my brain finally declared itself ready to receive knowledge. You could say I was a bit of a late bloomer.

What happened when writing those weekly 500-word essays was the beginning of my love of writing. I had no clue how to start but I read the instructions very carefully and did my best to resurrect the outlining skills I had actually learned and practiced in junior high and high school. I will say I was a champion outliner. The bottom line is that I stayed up literally all night writing and rewriting that essay, typing the final copy on my olive green Smith Corona Coronet typewriter that I’d received as a graduation gift from my parents. I made it to morning class with that essay fresh off the presses and turned it in. I was bleary-eyed but proud that I had discovered how to produce 500 words of thought on John Stuart Mill. As it turned out, I received a 20/20 on that paper and every other paper I produced over the semester. When I went in for my final class, my professor pulled me aside and said, “You need to be an English major.”

I was simultaneously thrilled and terrified at that prospect. I absolutely loved English but knew that selling that major to my mother, a dyed-in-the-wool feminist who believed I needed to leave college with a degree that guaranteed a good job, was going to be difficult. So, what did I do? I took math and science classes with the idea I’d be pre-med even though I had no real aptitude in those areas. I let that English degree – which is still a dream of mine – slip through my fingers in the name of practicality, and instead burned the midnight oil learning algebraic formulas and molecular structures. When it became clear my math and science skills were not my strength, I instead earned a Bachelor’s in Psychology and then a Master’s in Counseling Psychology. I did very much love working as a psychotherapist but I believe it was because I was fascinated by people’s stories. “Start at the beginning and tell me everything,” I would say, and loved hearing the details. Hopefully, that sharing was healing for my clients; it certainly helped me as a young therapist to understand the difficult challenges so many people face.  

I revisited graduate school after marrying my husband when he returned to college to finish his degree. We both attended the University of Texas at Dallas and I had begun a second Master’s in Comparative Literature. There, I met another professor in English who encouraged my writing. I was surprised and pleased and started writing a bit more seriously. That graduate experience was short-lived, however, with the arrival of a second child and the demands of a growing business. But, the seed was planted. I started journaling and even working on a novel whenever time permitted. It would still be a few more years before I decided to start seriously learning how to write. But I’ll leave that story for another time.

To be continued…