It is always heart-warming and humbling when people ask me to sign their books, and especially when they ask to get their photo taken with me. Many of the students from William Mason School in Choiceland wanted to take a picture with me a
nd I was touched.
As I posed for the photos with the William Mason students, I thought of myself as a young girl. I started to write at nine years of age and was seriously writing throughout my elementary and high school days.
By the time I was 14, and heading into high school, I knew writing was going to be a big and important part of my life. In fact, I wrote my first novel at 15. It was hand-written – no computers back then - often with a blunt pencil because I couldn’t find a pen. It was about high school friendships and innocent, budding romances with a bit of adventure thrown in for fun. By the time I finished writing it I had 150 loose-leaf pages in a binder and a better understanding of what it takes to plan and write a novel. You could say I never looked back from there but kept looking ahead to what I would write next. I thou
ght of all of that as I stood with the students beaming beside me, and I wondered what it would have been like if I, as a young girl, would have had such an opportunity. It would have meant the world to me to have such a photo, and it would have inspired and spurred me on to continue writing.
None of those students talked of being a writer, but they – like me, might have been the shy, quiet one. I hope, in taking those photos, I inspired one young person to pursue their dreams of being a writer.
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