Words by Rebecca T. Dickinson

Early morning stirs before the first orange burst peaks above the horizon. I leave my warm bed. Work summons me to my laptop. Tired fog spots block vision. Glasses fail to help. Grab a cup of coffee, and fingers are off to the races.

Writers work at different times. I try to pull one and one-half to two hours in the afternoon when my son naps. Some days it’s another schedule. I enter a world unfamiliar to everyone else except those like me. You, that is.

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.”

~ Dr. Seuss

 The Successes

Where do writers find success; in a MFA degree or a first publication? National or international fame? Writing for a blog or news publication?

I think it comes from absolute, all-consuming passion to extend beyond the limits of ourselves.

I am excited to announce the 2012 release of the East Gaston Magazine 2012-2013. It is a beautiful publication published each year by the Biz Well Corporation. The graphic designer performs excellent work with pictures and graphics. I have written for some of her other publications. This is my second East Gaston magazine.

What makes publications like East Gaston special to me as a writer is readers see I’m capable of writing more than a pretty poem. My husband’s sister called to discuss plans for our son’s second birthday this weekend.

“My aunt and I looked through the publication and realized you’d written all the articles,” she said. “They were very good.”

John and I gave her a few copies of the magazine because he sold advertisement for Biz Well. Although we told her I wrote the articles, it hadn’t sunk in.

At Christmas, I told her with a straight face, “I want to become an author.”

When you’re five, adults indulge you. When you’re older, they respond, “That’s nice. What’s your back up plan?” She asked me about education and the benefits, and I explained it’s on the table in my double life as a writer and educator. I’ve never been one without the other.

“I want to be an author.”

Those words remain since I the age of six. 

In 2011, I became an author. While I’d been published professionally, my stories received attention.

“I always knew you’d get there,” John says, because he never blinks when I tell him about my real life goals to become an author in addition to teaching.

Belmont is one of two accomplishments of which I’m proud. Telling Our Stories Press will release its short narrative memoir anthology Impact in July. The editor and publisher constantly encouraged me. She believed in my work. When anyone of a professional nature believes in your abilities it touches me.

I am humbled. Impact represents a wonderful point in my life. I might not be published for another two years, but someone recognized a story worthy of notice. We Never Said Hello, published as Grass from the Grave, is a short memoir I wrote in March 2011. Two different projects became interested in it. After its first publication in another anthology in the fall, Telling Our Stories Press asked to publish it.

Emotion rushed on the screen as I wrote Grass/ We Never Said Hello. I composed the short memoir in ten minutes. I didn’t know if it was any good. 

But, two excellent projects saw something in it. I hope to accomplish the same again in the future.

Tagged: Biz Well, chamber guide, East Gaston Chamber of Commerce, Impact, small presses, Telling Our Stories Press, writing from the heart