As a kid, I made up stories to tell myself to help me fall asleep. I learned early on that my idle brain would twist the mundane into a fog-filled anxiety cloud. Stories were a way to control that and keep the cloud at bay.

Like a bolt from the blue, an idea struck in the fall of 2014. Why not write those stories down?

With a lot of fear, some trepidation, and buckets of nervous energy, I signed up for NaNoWriMo 2014. In secret, I wrote 50,000 of the worst garbage words you’ll never read. But, I was hooked.

In early 2015 I confessed to my husband. “I’m a writer.”

He congratulated me and asked what was for dinner.

I read books and blog posts and Wikipedia to learn more about story. More about craft. More about business.

I won NaNoWriMo again in 2015.

I’ve written 8 books. Two are on the road to get published.

My husband read the 2 that aren’t a disaster. He congratulated me and agreed. “You’re a writer.”

Here’s to the dreamers. The storytellers. The thinkers.

Let’s do big things.