Age has
its advantages.
I mean,
it has its disadvantages, too. The other day, I made what I considered to be a
hip cultural reference by quoting Darth Vader’s revelation about Luke
Skywalker’s parentage in “The Empire Strikes Back.” “Star Wars” is hip, right?
With Disney planning to make Episode 7? Yeah, well, then I did the math. “The
Empire Strikes Back” was first released in 1980. That was thirty-three years ago. And I was already out of college then
(although not by much!).
Since
then, I got married and divorced, raised two kids, spent many years working in
radio news and a few more in TV news, worked briefly as a paralegal and longer
as a legal secretary. I also earned a masters’ degree in fiction writing – which
together with three bucks will get me a tall latte, as long as I don’t want
syrup.
There
were certainly times, when my life and/or my career went sideways, that I
wondered what it all was for. I had to learn video editing in college for my
degree, but then I never had to use it professionally. What was it for? And why
did I bother to get a paralegal certificate, only to move into a legal
secretary’s chair less than a year later? And I’d thought the M.A. would put me
on a fast track to getting published; if that wasn’t true, and it didn’t appear
to be, then why did I blow several thousand dollars on the degree?
But then
a group of people I knew from an Internet discussion board decided to put together
an anthology of our fiction and poetry. I wrote my first short story in years,
and it was accepted (not everybody’s was). Then we did another anthology, and
the story I wrote for that one was accepted, too. We made three anthologies in
all, and I had stories in each one. When our editor, Joy Calderwood, opened her
own e-book publishing venture and asked if I’d be interested in having her
publish two of those stories, I said, “Why not?”
And
people actually bought them. Not many people, but a few. So I wrote a novel – The Maidens’ War, and Joy published it,
too. Then I wrote another novel. By then, Amazon had started Kindle Direct
Publishing, so I self-published SwanSong
in order to get it up on Amazon. And then I started working on my first urban
fantasy, Seized: Book One of the Pipe
Woman Chronicles.
I was
having a great time as an indie author. But more than that, I began to realize
that I was using all those weird, disparate skills I’d picked up over a
lifetime. Video editing? I make my own book trailers. The paralegal
certificate? It helped me make the main character of the Pipe Woman Chronicles,
who’s a lawyer, sound believable. The years in journalism? I “write tight.” The
degree in fiction writing? I learned both how to patch holes in my own work,
and how to read novels not as an academic exercise, but as a way to figure out
how other writers do what they do. And my interest in mythology keeps showing
up in my books, too.
Now I’m
releasing the fourth Pipe Woman Chronicles book, Gravid, and beginning the fifth and final book. And the biggest
advantage of age, to me, is being able to see all the bits of my life coming
together. I really did go through all
of it for a reason: it has helped me become an author.
~ * ~
Bio:
Lynne
Cantwell grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan. She worked as a broadcast
journalist for many years; she has written for CNN, the late lamented
Mutual/NBC Radio News, and a bunch of radio and TV news outlets you have
probably never heard of, including a defunct wire service called Zapnews. In
addition to writing fantasy, Lynne is a contributing author at Indies Unlimited
and writes a monthly post for The Indie Exchange. She currently lives near
Washington, DC.
Links:
Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/lynnecantwell
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LynneCantwell
