I've been drawn to writing since childhood. It's the only serious dream I've ever had.
And yet, if you'd asked me about my writing ambitions a few years back, I probably would have told you I'd missed my best shot at ever completing a manuscript dr...
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This happened in 2012. Or maybe 2013? It's hazy.
During those years, my husband and I had two small children. Looking back, it's clear that we were both chronically sleep deprived. The constant fog has blurred my memory for dates, so the specifics on timing are lost.
The core memory, however, is crystal clear.
It was raining that night. The kind of chilly, damp rain you get in North Toronto in late November or early March. Transition weather.
I had just come home from the gym. Rain was pounding on the roof as I pulled into the driveway and put the car in park. I had the radio on while I was driving. The station was playing Journey's "Don't Stop Believing."
Steve Perry was belting out the chorus as I turned off the engine.
I sat there and watched the rain fall on the windshield while I listened to the song. And in that moment, I realized that I had stopped believing I was capable of writing and publishing a book.
I realized that the story I'd been telling myself about what my life would be was a complete and utter lie.
And I burst into tears.
* * *
Writing is the only dream I've ever had, and it caught me young.
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I used to sit at an old-fashioned desk (the kind with a steel beam connecting the wooden chair to the table) in my Scarborough bedroom and copy out stories I was reading in little notebooks. I was five at the time. Maybe six.
I was eight or nine when my dad (an engineer by trade), brought a desktop computer home in the mid '80s. I used it to write a short story about Megan and Sundance from My Little Pony. I remember the yellow letters on the black screen.
At 12, I caught another flash of inspiration during a bus ride to school. It prompted me to write a science fiction novella for my Grade 8 independent study project, this time using the world's heaviest laptop that my dad no longer needed for work.
