Yesterday I wrote about the earlier part of my life—including my husband and family. Today the focus is on my writing life.

Again, this topic is inspired by a college essay prompt that one of my students received: interview yourself. Here’s the second part:

Tell me about your writing.

I began to write when my children were small after I took a creative non-fiction class at the University of Texas at Dallas. Ray had returned to school to finish his Bachelor’s, and I enrolled in a second Master’s program in Literature. While there (for only a year due to our expanding business and family), I had a professor who was a great believer in my writing. She also suggested that I had a unique talent for imitation and might try my hand at writing romance novels. She had two friends (wives of college professors) who read romances, imitated the stories, and were making good money as published authors.

I decided to give it a try with Ray’s wholehearted endorsement and immediately began crafting a romance novel. I had no idea what I was doing, but I loved the process. I submitted three chapters to Silhouette and received a handwritten letter from the senior editor with suggestions and criticisms. I was encouraged and kept writing. Ultimately, I stopped on that novel because I had to accept that this was not the type of fiction I wanted to write. But the hook was firmly set by that point. I knew I wanted to write fiction and creative nonfiction.

Since that time, I have had dozens of short fiction and memoir pieces published, plus a flash fiction story of mine and a personal essay have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (the Oscars of the Small Presses). That has been very satisfying indeed. I have also written a 425-page memoir that I later changed to a novel, which I just published back in April 2025. I am currently working on a second novel. I’ve blogged daily now for the past 13 years and have a decent-sized readership, many of whom encourage my continued writing. It’s been a few years since I took that first course at UTD.

What about your work as a writing coach?

That all came by accident. I took a job as a 4th grade teacher at a private school in West Hollywood that catered to the movie industry. After one happy year there, Ray and I concluded I had to find a job that made more money (I was receiving a beginning teacher’s salary and trying to live in Beverly Hills). I submitted my resignation for the upcoming school year, but several parents immediately requested that I work with their children privately on writing. I agreed just for the summer. By fall, they begged me to continue working as a private writing coach for their children.

That was twenty-five years ago. Since that time, I have expanded to adults and online teaching. In other words, my passion for writing helped me create a life where I could get paid to help others write. My kids were in school, and I could work from home—a perfect situation for everyone. Being a writing coach is one of the happiest facets of my life. I was teaching imaginary students at the age of three, so this is a very natural extension of a natural inclination. Plus, teaching writing makes me a better writer. I never ask my students to write anything I don’t also write myself. I believe writing is a vulnerable act, and I am not going to ask students to lay themselves bare on the page unless I am willing to do the same. That brings an equality to the situation and mutual respect for how tough writing sometimes can be.

What are your goals and aspirations related to writing?

Of course, I aspire to be a world-renowned, critically acclaimed writer who ultimately wins the Nobel Prize for Literature. I, along with every other writer I know, share that hope and dream. However, whatever comes along in that positive direction—however modest in comparison—is also just fine with me.

I have come to learn that writing isn’t so much about aspiring as it is about actually sitting down and doing the work. The rest will come or not, and that is beyond my control. But connecting with readers, articulating feelings that ring true to them and their own experiences, creating characters that are multi-faceted and frustratingly imperfect—these are my real goals. I want a reader to come up to me and say, “You wrote about X and I knew exactly what you meant. It was as though you simply wrote down what I was feeling.” Believe it or not, that has already happened a few times from writings I’ve shared on my blog, and let me assure you, THAT is the best compliment I can ever receive as a writer. That is what motivates me to sit down and write every night: the hope that if I dare to be honest enough with my own feelings, then someone reading will nod and say, “Yes, I know.”

Do you think your family is proud of you even though you have not yet had a best-selling book?

Of course, I know my family would love it if that dream came true. They would love it for me because they have seen how hard I’ve worked at writing and how diligent I have been with this lofty aspiration. However, I also know that they are proud of me right this minute with whatever modest success I have had. They know that I am a happier, more fulfilled person because of my writing, and I believe that makes them happy as well.

In addition, I believe that watching me strive for something so difficult to achieve (there are, after all, only a small fraction of writers in the world who actually make an excellent living as novelists) has helped them set their own dreams high. I think they have learned through watching my process that happiness is achieved in the pursuit of the dream, whether or not the dream reaches its ultimate fruition. I have watched my daughters pick very difficult graduate fields of study—medicine, law, English literature—and I have seen them do the work, the plowing through, that comes with setting high aims. I would like to think they recognize that passion is the key element in whatever one does in life. Move in the direction of anything (besides addictions) that makes you feel even a little bit better. Baby step toward happiness as it shows itself every day. One day you’ll wake up and realize it’s thirty years later, and you have a long history of doing what you decided you wanted to do so long ago. That is a good feeling all on its own. It also makes for an interesting life.

Any last words?

I feel grateful that I have the opportunity to write. That is a gift in itself. So many people struggle just to put food on the table and have little time for anything as “impractical” as writing. I am aware that I am very lucky. I am also thrilled to have found something that brings me so much pleasure. Writing augments every aspect of my life since I am always considering how I might translate my experiences onto the page. That adds a lot of spice to life.

Overall, I hope I will trust that whatever I do with writing is just fine as it is. I don’t want to fret and worry over my writing or talent. That, I believe, is time-wasting and a surefire way not to sit down and do the work. Writing requires actually writing. As Ray Bradbury says, “Throw up on the page. You can clean it up afterwards.” That is my approach, pure and simple.