What motivates you to write? Are you driven to write by an inner fire, or do you write because it pays the bills? Or are you living the worst-case scenario, writing to prove your worth and skill to someone who once doubted your capability?
My writing career began with a blazing, emotional need to write, but even as my college professors encouraged me to become a professional writer, one voice—one I believed and trusted above all others—told me otherwise.
My college boyfriend—isn’t it always the boyfriend?—recognized my talent and found it threatening, as if the world could only contain one writer, and it had to be him. Ray actually wrote about as well as an average high school sophomore, but he could not stand the idea that there might be some aspect of our relationship in which I bested him.
When I came to my senses and Ray and I finally parted, I walked away from the shambles of our relationship with a big V for vendetta scorched into my psyche. I’ll show that man, I thought. I’ll get published long before he will—if he ever does.
Within a year I’d secured a contributing editor spot at an alternative weekly, and two years later I was a full-time editor of a biweekly entertainment magazine. Driven by my need for intellectual retribution, I left journalism and climbed the ladder at an advertising agency, but that path would never lead to my dream of becoming an author. Eleven years later I left to write my first book, Breadwinner Wives and the Men They Marry, a groundbreaking volume that delved into the sociological and psychological impacts of women who made more money than their husbands did.
My book proposal landed on the desk of the right publisher at the right time, and I had a deal seven days after she received it. As I planned a speaking tour, I couldn’t wait to find out where Ray lived, so I could casually get back in touch and invite him to a signing. I imagined his crestfallen look when he heard about my accomplishment.
I fired up Google—and when I entered Ray’s name, his father’s obituary popped up. It contained this sentence: “He was predeceased by his son, Raymond.”
Ray had been dead for seven years.
All that time, while I worked toward the day when he would see me signing my first book, he was beyond ever knowing or caring.
“If I were not so focused on proving myself to Ray,” I asked myself once the room stopped spinning, “what would I have done with my life?”
It took time, but the inner fire returned. I regrouped and began the journey that continues today, traveling the continent to write about America’s national parks with my photographer-husband. I couldn’t serve the cold dish of revenge to a dead man, but I could refocus my career and live well—the best revenge there is.