Motivation January 30, 2023
I’ve been a published children’s book author for five years and a writer for nine. Hard to believe. I never intended to write for others. It all started when I was putting a scrapbook together for my niece and her family to recapture some precious moments from the first year of her first child’s life.
I began by going through all the pictures I had of her daughter, my great-niece (and the first of the next generation of our family). I planned to give it to them at the birthday party on her 1st birthday. Documenting the changes in a growing child is very enlightening, especially when new parents’ lives get turned upside down with everything. As I mentioned, I never expected more than to give them the scrapbook.
My version of the scrapbook had family pictures and captions highlighting not only my great-niece’s milestones but the wonderful ways in which my niece and her husband were parenting. During the party, my niece and I went inside the house when she opened it. As she flipped the pages, she started to cry.
Her reaction caught me off guard. When I asked her if something upset her, she said no. As it turned out, there were two reasons for the tears. First, she loved the book and thought it was a wonderful gift. The second reason was she was pregnant again and just going to announce it to the family that day. Her emotions and hormones were kicking in! My motivation was clear.
My point in telling you all this is it was the jumping off point into my writing career. Should I really do more with this book? Yes, it was fun doing the gift book, but was I a good-enough writer* to put a book in the hands of the public? How would I even begin? But the journey started. (*The theme of being a “good-enough-writer” happens to every author!)
Not to scare anyone off but writing your thoughts in the form of a story is easy compared to writing a book! I used my pragmatic, one-foot-in-front-of-another, approach to get things done. What a lesson this has been, and continues, on every level. There are so many levels, it’s scary.
Writing for children, in my opinion, is important, hard work that is so satisfying I can’t begin to define it. I’m so grateful I had this darling baby as my first adventure in this journey. Come back and join me as I walk you through all three of my published books and give you some previews of my fourth! I will continue to post the link on my “Halina Schafer, Author” page on Facebook/Meta which will bring you to my Blog page on my website: https://www.third-careerpress.com/blog Take the journey with me and see if there’s a hidden book in you! Then, let’s talk!
Halina Schafer, Author,
Third-Career Press, LLC
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