I remember being about six years old and wanting to write books but didn’t know how. So I sat and pretended to be a writer, filling pages and pages of blank notebooks with “words.” It felt great. I was prolific and profound. No one could understand my writing but me and it didn’t matter — I was writing!
Forty two years later, after publishing the Surviving Divorce newsletter on my own for five years, someone “discovered” me. They asked if I would write a book on grief and sudden loss. So I co-authored my first book and it was published by Sourcebooks. My name was on the cover and I was making appearances at book signings, giving interviews on TV and radio talk shows, and enjoying a royalty check. I was being paid to put words, real ones this time, on paper.
That first book, I Wasn’t Ready to Say Goodbye: Surviving, Coping and Healing After the Sudden Loss of a Loved One, has to date been translated into several languages. Now I had become an international author! As I look over at the bookshelf in my office, I can see several spines of the book displaying words in Russian, Korean and Chinese (I think). The updated edition has just been released and having been a best seller for so many years, is being called a “classic” — their words, not mine.
All of this amounts to a heady experience. I sometimes don’t feel like I’ve done anything to deserve all the accolades, especially the heartfelt hundreds of reviews on Amazon. I guess the book has helped a lot folks. Thank you to those who have taken the time to rate the book there and write those reviews.
Every writer has to start somewhere. I started by filling notebooks with scribbles that no one understood but me. It’s funny, but some days I feel like I’m still doing that!
