Becoming an Author

“A writer is simply a photographer of thoughts” — Brandon A Trean

 I love language, reading, writing and how people communicate. This is what inspired me to become a speech-language pathologist. I also have always enjoyed creating my own written pieces. Little stories here and there. I wrote my first ‘book’ in Grade 5. My teacher, Mr. Brink, was kind enough to ‘edit’ it for me, and encourage me to keep going. The high volume writing and busy times through high school, my bachelor’s degree, and master’s in speech placed writing for fun and creativity on the back-burner. Only after my career path settled in and my young family grew did I think that I could devote time to writing. To refresh myself, I took a couple of correspondence courses on children’s literature (yes, there was no online school at the time - best I could do was email smaller word documents to make the feedback come faster!). One of the final courses I took in advanced writing offered me the chance to create my first middle grade novel, “A Wild Ride”. My instructor provided excellent feedback and editing, and truly felt I should pursue getting it published. I can’t say exactly what stopped me, but I didn’t move forward with this. I shelved the project in 2006. Looking back, I don’t think I really imagined anyone would ever want to read it.

Fast forward 10 years, and the desire to write comes bubbling up again. The rise of self-publishing has made seeing writing projects through to completion a bigger reality. My successful professional career has laid the foundation to fund such as approach. So I dusted the book off, did some additional edits, and tried my hand in the self-publishing world. Long story short - my experience was less than satisfactory, but did result in a published version of the book available on Amazon.com in October 2018. No fanfare. No nothing. Project basically died in the water. Despite what I felt was a thorough review into my chosen self-publishing house before I jumped in, the US company (and later one of its affiliate companies) I had chosen did not have my best interests at heart like I thought they would. Now my writing was stalled yet again :(

However, I am determined and tenacious when I believe in something (ask my kids!). Deep down I knew writing is what I wanted to do, so I tried again - this time with Canadian company, Friesen Press (www.friesenpress.com). The team at Friesen is amazing - everything someone starting up in the publishing world could wish for. Fortunately, they were able to help me revamp my book for republishing. So far I have had the book re-edited, a new cover developed, and it is currently in the layout stage! I am so happy and relieved! All I can say to others wanting to publish their work is : don’t give up! There is a publishing match out there for you who will help you realize your vision.

“A day will come when the story inside you will want to breathe on its own. That’s when you’ll start writing” — Sarah Noffke