I Was Afraid to Sleep in My Bed—Then I Wrote My Way Out
Authenticity Is the Real Magic
I don’t usually talk much about my past because I prefer not to let the things that happened to me define me.
I much prefer to define myself. I’m ornery like that. But some days I actually feel a little compelled to talk about that past. Not in sordid detail. Sorry if you are into sordid details!
So here it is: A while ago I was so afraid of my home that I would sleep in my car, but writing saved me.
People didn’t know about the sleep-in-the-car thing when it was happening. Most people don’t know that even now. I was a respected member of that little community pretending like everything was a-okay, hunky dory, and like a 1950s-style sitcom full of canned laughter and sweet relationships.
But I would sleep in the car, often with my dog when it was cold. Maine winters are really cold.
What does this have to do with writing magical things? Did someone cast a spell and free me from my freezing cold car? In a weird way, yes.
I have the most amazing daughter and she loved the Harry Potter books when she was little. She wanted me to make a magical world like Harry’s, but catered to her. She wanted the magic to be in Maine set in Acadia National Park near where we lived. She wanted the main character to be a girl who had a cool best friend that may or may not be a troll. She wanted the book to be about friendship and justice and have funny parts.
I’d make up the story day after day, telling it to her as we drove to my newspaper reporting assignments that happened after school, so I’d have to take her.
And eventually I thought that writing this story, which eventually became the TIME STOPPERS books, was so much more interesting than writing and editing stories for newspapers about local planning board meeting and setback ordinances.
(Apologies to all the lovely people I know on planning boards).
I wrote this book when I waited to pick Em up from school. I wrote it during down times during town meetings. I wrote it on napkins, in my car, everywhere.
I wanted that story so badly.
I wanted to be a writer so badly.
But I didn’t believe in myself. I couldn’t even admit to myself that I wanted to write.
I was a woman who was too afraid to sleep in her own bed.
I was a woman that bad things happened to.
I didn’t believe I could do something like writing stories about magic and heroes especially for a living, especially when I felt so far from a hero in my own life.
Then I read about other writers and how one had all these struggles, about how she wrote and was rejected, but kept writing because she was compelled to make it happen. She persisted.
Stephen King? Same thing.
Almost every writer I admired? Same thing.
And I realized that I could persist too.
So, I took that story I was writing and submitted it to Vermont College’s Master of Fine Arts program and promptly forgot about submitting it because there was no chance I could ever get in. And if I did, how could I pay for it?
I got in. My sweet grandmother died and left me a bit of money in her will. I used that money to pay for my master's.
And a year later I was published, not with TIME STOPPERS, the story I wrote for my daughter, but another story with less magic but still a lot of heroes.
When you look at children fantasy novels, there’s so much to admire: kids battling monsters, riding dragons that they were once afraid of, taking control of their own magic.
But a lot of time there’s a lot to admire in the stories of their authors. The authors that I admire the most are the ones who are authentic, who never shy away from telling the world about their bad times, who don’t pretend it’s all Instagram filters and joy all that time.
It was other people’s authenticity that allowed me to find my own brave.
I wish that we could all see how we can do that for other people. We only have tiny glimpses of the worlds (real and imaginary) that we create, tiny bits of knowledge of the good we do and the impact we make.
A lot of times it’s really easy to feel we have no impact at all, right?
I owe a lot to other brave humans—authors or not. I became a successful writer who actually gets to write for a living. I have a daughter who graduated Harvard and is all around amazing as she heads out into the adult world ready to make an impact, to change it for good. I live in an adorable place and I never have to sleep in the car, and I’m hardly ever afraid any more.
And it’s because I heard other people’s stories and thought, “Maybe I can do this, too. Maybe I can be brave. Maybe I can keep trying.”
I hope everyone reading this gets to have that happen to them, and I hope that we can work together to make this world a place where everyone can have the opportunity to feel safe in their homes, in the streets, in their countries, a world where we can all have the security of space and belief in ourselves to make whatever magic it is that we want to make.
Jay Alto said, "Most people are completely wrong about charisma. The 'secret' isn't confidence. Or owning the space. Or mirroring. It's authenticity. Being unapologetically yourself. That's what people are drawn to. Not superficial hacks that win friends and influence people."
I think that applies to finding magic in your life, too, and success.
So how do you do that, right? How do you remember who you are, who your authentic self is?
Maybe this video is an okay first step.
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I know you have "Be Brave" Fridays, but my friend? You are brave every single day. Thank you so much for sharing this. 💜