A writer - coming out of the closet.

I am a writer. Since I spend the greater part of everyday writing, I think that qualifies me to call myself a writer. I have even had a few articles published, but now I’m working on the big one – a novel.

My dad, whose name was Gordon Meyers, was a writer, so I know it is possible to support yourself and your family by writing. Even so it took me to my mid-fifties to start writing fiction. I don’t regret the other things I did in the meantime, it’s all grist for the mill, but I do wish I’d started sooner. I encourage anyone reading this who is considering it to give it a shot – now.

But I wish my father was still alive so I could ask him if he had ever wanted to write a novel. Today I asked my mother, who simply said, "He could never afford to take the time. He had a family to support." So he wrote for the Sears catalogue to begin with, then for Howdy Doody, a Canadian children's show of the 1950s. Then he went, very successfully, into advertising to support his family. Later in life he wrote for Ideas, a CBC radio show, and countless other things, but never a novel. And all of this with a grade 8 education. But those were different days. It was the 1930's, to be exact, when he quit school to go into the family painting and paperhanging business. But I digress.

He could never afford to write a novel. Don't I know it. I am on my second book, a murder mystery, while my first, a contemporary romance, is out shopping for agents. I feel it is out shopping without me. I did spend a lot of time getting it ready before sending it out into the world, but once I pushed 'Send', it was on it's own.

It is two years since I started working on the novels, and if I wasn't a "kept" woman, ie. married to a very supportive man, I couldn't be concentrating on writing to this extent.

This is the start of my writer's blog. Why and I writing them? Maybe to start a dialogue with other writers. Like my son said, just write all the stuff you talk to us about. Stuff they don’t necessarily want to hear. Everyday. And maybe other writers do.

How and Why I started on my first book, well, that's for next time.

Love to hear from other writers out there. Or agents...