Ask Me A Question – July 2022

Have you always been a writer? If not, when did you start?

No, I’m not one of those authors you read about who has always written. But I’ve always been a reader and, like most readers, always thought, “I could do that.”

In my twenties, I dabbled in poetry. Very cringe-worthy poetry. Around that time, I also made several false starts on writing novels. I quickly realized that I didn’t know how to keep going past the first few pages. I’m going to age myself here and say that this was before the Internet really took off. Which meant I had to go to a bookstore and buy several how-to-write books. Unfortunately, they were drier than century-old bones. I’ve never been big on forcing myself to muddle through misery, so I didn’t finish any of them.

Life and my career got in the way, but I always thought “someday.” Then, one day I read an interview with one of my favorite authors, Mary Higgins Clark. She said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that if you are a writer, you write. You’ll write any time you get a chance. If you say, “someday I’ll write,” you’ll never write. Since I didn’t personally know any authors, I took her words as gospel and packed away my author dreams with my drier than the Sahara writing books.

Despite believing that I wasn’t a writer, I jotted down random story ideas for the next couple of decades that would keep me awake at night. I even had a sports blog for a while because I convinced myself that it would be easier to write a novel if I could get into the writing habit. Still, I couldn’t start a novel or even a short story. I almost even quit whispering “someday” to myself.

After I retired, I had a magical moment. A total stranger told me I should be an author and write mystery novels. It was exactly what I’d always wanted to do but had been too scared even to articulate it to anyone else. Because I’m not a writer, right? Mary Higgins Clark said so. But someone had given me permission, so I started thinking “now” instead of “someday.” Still, something (Y’all, it was totally Mary Higgins Clark) was holding me back, and I couldn’t sit down and start.

Then I read a book that had very little to do with writing, but there was an entire chapter about creative people who love what they do but still have to use all types of tactics to make themselves actually do it. Around the same time, I read Gretchen Rubin’s book, The Four Tendencies, which I highly recommend. And finally, I realized that people have different motivators. That freed me from the “I’m not a writer” mindset. A few months later, in November of 2016, I started the book that would become Dying in Dallas, and I’ve never looked back.

If you have a question you’d like answered, you can leave a comment below or email it to me at jamie@jckeough.com