I still don’t know everything, still make mistakes. Why they asked, I’ll never know, but I’ll always be grateful to Ellis Vidler and Linda Lovely because they taught me so much. Fortunately, I met two writers when I joined the local chapter of Sisters in Crime who asked if I wanted to critique with them. I went back and forth from one person’s thoughts to another’s, never realizing there needed to be a break. I mean I knew that, but I didn’t know what he didn’t know because I didn’t know it either. Later, when I learned more, I realized he wrote only non-fiction. He helped with sentence structure and the technical elements I knew almost nothing about. He worked on three of my books and offered three edits for each one. The editor was a character and we became great friends. I still have that book in my computer, still think it’s a good story, but time has passed and I need to rework it. Still, those words, ‘The story is great,’ had a tremendous impact on me. I did mention I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t I? When he reached page 49, he emailed me that the story was great-really, his words-but the writing needed work. I found an editor on the Internet, wrote him, and he agreed to edit my book. Being a realist and self-critical to a fault, I thought my first story was interesting with intriguing characters, but I was savvy enough to realize I didn’t know what the hell I was doing as far as the technical aspects.

My stories took me to another place, a place I loved. More importantly, I was hooked on writing. I was anyone I wanted to be as long as there was a twisted tale involved. Over the years, I’ve been an ex-call girl, a secret novelist, a wayward wife, a man who spent fifteen years in prison, a blind psychologist, and a psychic. I had an idea, knew the characters, but I didn’t have a clue where I was going, or maybe I should say where the characters were taking me. Years later, no, decades later, when I needed a diversion because real life became too heavy, I sat down at my computer and started typing out a story.

That led me to art school and a career as an illustrator. Wherever there was a piece of paper and pencil, I drew something. Most of the writers in the groups to which I belong claim to have written stories since they were kids. Then I thought longer and harder about what “made it” meant. When Jenny asked me to write a blog post titled My Made-it Moment, I thought, made it? But I haven’t made it. I’d missed it, but Polly knows what the boat is, and boy, is she sailing it.

And I realized that I’d completely missed the boat. I spotted at least a half-dozen Made It Moments as I read Polly Iyer’s piece–see if you can spot them all And then I came to the Moment Polly cites out of them all.

InSight by Polly Iyer