First, an update: I am a little over one-third of the way through my rewrite and first editing round of my next novel. This means I’ve polished about 32,000 words of it and have about 67 pages done. I’m still hoping to complete the full draft by the end of July, or shortly after, so I can get it to my beta readers for feedback.
August is a bit busy with readings and working the Nebraska Writers Guild at the Nebraska State Fair for a few days, so I want to set the novel aside for a while then and focus on those things. Then, I will hit it hard in September until it’s finished.
At the beginning of September, I am going to be the keynote speaker for the Columbus Public Library’s author fair at the brand new, and huge, public library in downtown Columbus, NE.
So, I thought I’d use this week’s “Tomes and Topics” to share a draft of the speech I used a year ago and that I’ve tweaked a bit. I will continue to tweak it and practice it between now and September 2nd, and it will surely take a few different forms between now and then, but the heart and the gist of it will be the same. (There are a couple videos of me on my YouTube channel discussing aspects of my philosophy if you’d care to view them — search Tammy Marshall - Author on YouTube.)
“It’s Never Too Late Until It’s Too Late.”
It’s Never Too Late Until It’s Too Late – Start living your dream now. I want you to think about your greatest passion. For me, it’s always been writing. I have lots of hobbies and things I enjoy doing like riding my motorcycle, swimming, watercolor painting, cross-stitching, doing puzzles, traveling, reading, etc., but writing is my passion. It’s the thing I most love doing, and I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I go back into my younger years, and what did I fantasize about becoming? A writer. But for many years, I wasn’t writing – at least, not at the level I wanted to be writing. I was treating it more like a hobby and fitting it in when I could find the time. I’ve always believed that we make time for what matters to us, so I did strive to write, but I found myself failing to write as often as I needed to to nourish my soul because I was extremely busy teaching, coaching and directing plays and speech teams, raising two great kids, and doing so many other things that took up my precious time. So, I definitely wasn’t writing on any sort of regular basis. I was truly miserable, and my misery stemmed from two things: 1. I was married to a horrible man, and 2. I was doing a job that I didn’t love, that I wasn’t passionate about. My passion was writing! I never intended to teach for 30 years, but that’s what I did because once you get yourself firmly enmeshed into something, it’s hard to extricate yourself for a variety of reasons, but I knew I had to turn my life around. So, first, I got divorced, and eliminated problem number one. On to problem number two. Prior to the divorce, I had managed to convince the editor of the Norfolk Daily News to let me write a column, so I did have something each month that was feeding my writing soul. That column was meant to run a year of two to give me some writing experience for my resume and to hopefully help me entice an agent at some point. I never expected it to last as long as it has, and I’m now in my 14th year of writing it and it also appears in the Bristol Herald Courier. A couple years after the divorce, I asked the editor if he’d consider serialize publishing my first novel which I’d written slowly over the course of many years whenever I could find (or make) the time to write. It was complete, but it was simply languishing on my computer. I’d attempted at times to get an agent, but my attempts were purely hit-or-miss things, and I wasn’t yet able to work at my writing the way I wanted to, so I thought if I could get it read, then I could see if it was even a good enough book to publish. Surprisingly, he agreed, and “The Clearwater House” ran one chapter a week in the online edition for a year. As the year went on, more and more people started contacting me to ask where they could get a copy of the book or to ask what happened next in the story. After the year was up, I was both thrilled and frustrated about its reception. Thrilled that so many had enjoyed it. Frustrated that I still didn’t know how I’d ever go about getting it published in the traditional manner because I was just too bogged down with all the school responsibilities and with so many other things. So, I decided to give the self-publishing route a chance and sat down to figure out how to do it. Between the time of my divorce and my decision to leave teaching, nine more years passed, and I continued to try to get some writing in whenever I could. I did manage to put together the story collection of “State of Georgia and Other Writings” in honor of my best friend who passed away on September 7, 2018, but I still wasn’t writing full time like I wanted. I still wasn’t giving writing its due diligence. Then, three more very important people in my life died in the two years following my best friend’s death and another dear friend almost died when her kidneys failed her. The oldest of these was my uncle who was only 60 when he died, and he was a very talented photographer with so many dreams ahead of him. Our band director was only 40 when he bled out during surgery to remove a tumor on his liver on Christmas Eve 2018. He was the heart of our school, and so much died along with him. My boyfriend’s middle son took his own life on April 2, 2019, at the age of 32 when his PTSD from his many overseas missions in the Air Force became too much for him to bear. My best friend was only 50 when she died from cancer, and she was the sweetest person I’ve ever known. Prior to her death, I lost a former student in a horrific way. Sydney Loofe was murdered and dismembered in November of 2017. Those deaths served as giant wake-up calls for me that simply couldn’t be ignored. For years, I’d wanted to leave teaching, but I kept doing it for financial reasons. However, I was utterly miserable. It was a happier misery since I wasn’t married to a horrible person anymore, but it was still misery. Because I wasn’t doing what I truly wanted to be doing with my life. I’d seen these dear people, all of whom still had so much life ahead of them and so many hopes and dreams, die and disappear from my life and the world. Financially, I needed to teach two more years until I was 55, so I’d be eligible for my pension age-wise, but the thought of teaching even two more days, let alone two more years, made me want to jump off a cliff. I wanted to write. That’s all I wanted to do. That’s my passion. Finally, with the help of a very supportive boyfriend, I decided to leave teaching and go after my dream. Once I made that decision and turned in my resignation, everything about my life changed for the better. Financially? Not so much. But everything else from my emotional to my physical to my mental to my psychological state all improved, and hopefully, with time, the financial aspect will, too. I knew that I didn’t want to end up at the end of my life, whenever that might be, with the biggest regret ever – the regret of never going after my dream. I don’t buy into the belief that it’s too late to pursue a dream because I believe that it’s never too late until it’s truly too late, meaning you’re dead. Society puts too much emphasis on youth, but age brings experience and knowledge and wisdom that serves a person well in pursuit of her dream. Once I’d committed myself to a life of writing, I knew that I absolutely must make time for it every single day, no excuses. After all, like I said before, we make time for what matters, so with my teaching responsibilities no longer an issue and my children raised and out of the house, I could definitely make time. But the concept of being a writer or of being anything new is a staggering thing. It can overwhelm you because there’s just so much to do and so many avenues you could go down that knowing where to start can make a person stop before she even starts. That’s when I decided to Chandlerize my life. I call it that from the TV show “Friends” and the character of Chandler, who I adore. In one episode, he is about to get married, but he freaks out at the enormity of what he’s about to do, and he flees. His friend, Ross, finally catches up to him and talks him into doing one thing – just go to his apartment. He shows him that doing that one thing isn’t scary at all. Then he suggests that Chandler do one more little thing – take a shower. That’s not scary either, and Chandler easily manages it. Eventually, by doing one little thing at a time, he builds up to the big thing of getting married and the bigger thing called marriage that follows it. Thus, I adopted that philosophy of doing at least one thing every single day that propels my writing career forward. One night, not long after I’d submitted my resignation, I was driving home from something and happened to be listening to a program in which this woman said she was motivated by the expression “If Not You, Then Who?” That hit me really hard, so when I got home, I wrote it on the cover of my first progress journal. In these journals, I write down everything I do every single day for my writing career because then it’s tangible proof of my progress, and it’s a handy reference when I need to look back and remember a date I did something or a librarian I emailed, etc. It’s also useful for tax purposes. Mostly, though, I write down what I do every day for me. What started as days where I generally only accomplished one or two things has grown into days where I accomplish ten or more at times. Some of those things are minor such as sending out an email and some of those things are major such as speaking before a group of people or writing 2,000 words in my next novel. The thing is, though, that I do at least one thing every single day because I’ve Chandlerized my life and am now following my hardcore belief to the letter – I am making time for what matters to me. I now make a lot of time for it because it’s my job, and I treat it as such. It's my passion, and I plan to write for the rest of my life. My writing career didn’t take off until I was over 50 years of age. To many people, including the teenagers I taught for 30 years of my life, anyone over the age of 50 is ancient and washed up. I beg to differ. Look around and you’ll see all kinds of older people achieving amazing things. Things that put my little writing career to shame, in fact. There’s no age limit on happiness or on going after your dream. So, I ask you, what is your passion, and do you make time for it every single day? If not, what is stopping you? If you’re like me, you can probably list a lot of things that are stopping you, but if you are also like me and can be really honest with yourself, you’ll probably see that the only thing standing between your passion and you is you, so I urge you to get out of your way and go after it. Because, seriously, if not you, then who?
What’s your passion? Are you pursuing it? If you aren’t, why not? Stop making excuses and start finding ways to do the thing you love to do. Don’t wait until it’s truly too late.
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Love to all,
Tammy Marshall