Let’s see. I became a mom in 1990. And a working mom several months later. But that’s going back too far. I’ll start here . . .

In 2002 I accepted my failure as a poet, set aside my dreams of being a novelist or, at best, a short story writer and started cranking out random essays on a variety of topics. I submitted one to The Commonspace, an essay about how I’d never make it in St. Louis because I didn’t go to high school there. (Follow the link to see the haircut that makes me look ten years older than I am). It was the first time I published anything online and it began a friendship with the editor/publishers that I still treasure today.

What The Commonspace did for me, as I published several other pieces with them, was give me the writing confidence I needed. I don’t think I’ve ever thanked Brian and Amanda sufficiently for this so I’ll do it now: Thank you, guys. You changed my life.

Then, I wrote a goofy little essay about capri pants and who shouldn’t wear them and e-mailed it to some friends and family. My sister pushed me a bit further and said, “You should talk to the Post, this is really good.”

I started the conversation with the Post-Dispatch, encouraged by both my sister and the response I’d gotten from what I’d written so far, and with dry mouth and in a nervous sweat, wrote my first “test” article for STLToday.com.

To be continued . . .

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 7:48 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.