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My Writer's Journal

On becoming a writer: Part III

Finding time to write was always an issue in my early days. I whipped through housework in the mornings and then flew down to my desk in the basement as soon as the kids began their afternoon naps. The teenage girl next door was hired to play with them for an hour or two after she got home from school. Somehow I managed to get in a couple of hours a day at my typewriter, and I began to get replies from query letters about ideas I had for magazine articles. I decided to start work on a novel.

Then we moved, Baby #3 was born (another boy), and I no longer had a teenaged girl next door. The novel, titled BIRTH DAYS, made the rounds and was rejected by every editor who looked at it, but an agent saw it and suggested I write a children's book--an option I had never considered. Nevertheless, I got the idea of a sewing book for little girls, since I had none of my own, and to my amazement, it was accepted. MISS PATCH'S LEARN-TO-SEW BOOK was published in 1969. Furthermore, my articles were selling fairly well. I felt like a real writer, but the novel was a disappointment.

(To be continued)
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