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A Writer Must Write
I was born and
bred in Laurel County Kentucky. I never had much self-confidence until
I started attending a class and met a writer. With her encouragement
I wrote an article on a subject I felt keen about and submitted it
to the editor of our local newspaper. He looked at me
over his glasses and asked, "Where have you been hiding?"
The editor suggested
a pseudonym because of the articles unpopular context, and it certainly
caused a ruckus in our town. Some folks wanted to hang me and some
wanted to make me a heroine. As letters came in by the box-full, newspaper
sales snowballed, and I became an overnight success. I also became
one of the highest paid feature writers on that newspaper, far surpassing
my mentor who had written for them for five years and never been paid
a dime. It was about this
time that my marriage became troubled. My husband's coworkers and
customers were telling him how much they enjoyed my articles. Instead
of feeling pride he felt envy. He was afraid people would think I
was smarter than he was. He treated my writing like a form of prostitution
and went into a rage when he caught me doing it. My mother hated
my being a writer as much as he did and often said: "You are
wasting your time.", "Only smart people can be writers.",
or "Your husband would leave you if he had any sense." In order to endure
the verbal abuse from the two people I loved most, I stopped writing
for the newspaper and began a novel about a wife running away from
home. It took ten years to complete because I had a mental breakdown
in 1984 and spent the next eight years of my life fighting mental
depression. In 1989, I emerged a much stronger person. I finished the
novel while running my own "old and rare" book store. A
year later I closed it down and opened a weekly newspaper. The newspaper
was closed when my husband relocated to Cincinnati. Having worked
nonstop for several years I decided to take a vacation and asked him
to join me. He refused. I was determined to visit Florida and appreciative
when my oldest daughter and her husband came along. Before I left
I went to see my old editor and offered to do some travel pieces along
the way. I got the assignment. Florida was great. I got to Daytona,
checked into a small, seedy motel and gave my daughter the chore of
finding an interesting story while I walked down the beach barefoot
at dusk. The rolling, moving,
motion of the water mingling with sounds of seagull's squawking overhead
was somehow calming to the spirit. As was the sound of the roaring,
smacking, waves pounding against the sandy beach. My nostrils luxuriated
in the musky scent of salt, fish, and seaweed. As I stood there curious
but afraid to go closer, a light misty spray touched my skin and a
soft ocean breeze lifted my hair. It was a combination of new experiences
to be filed away for future use. When my daughter
called the Chamber of Commerce for a list of tourist attractions,
and explained that I was writing a series of travel articles for our
hometown newspaper, they created a schedule that put us in all the
right places and volunteered to cover the expenses. By the time I
returned to the room, my daughter was gathering our belongings. We
had been invited to stay at one of the best hotels in town. We were
given a suite, telephone privileges, access to office equipment and
postage to send our stories home. We had also been booked for a meal
at a different restaurant each evening. Back home in Cincinnati
I purchased a computer and rewrote Set me Free. Once the manuscript
was completed, I submitted it to publishers and received rejection
slips. In the end I self-published
Set Me Free as two books--Possibilities and Resolutions. The reviews
have been impressive. The one that means the most to me came from
Writers Digest:. "What impressed me most about Possibilities
was its detailed narration and its emphasis on movement and action
in the plot. The opening is powerful because the reader gets a vivid
picture of Nora and senses the danger she's in by the negative descriptions
of Jason. The action of the book reveals urgency for Nora to work
through the psychological effects of her circumstances, and thus sustains
the reader's attention until there is resolution." My life can be likened to a leaf being tossed around by the wind. I have gone where fate led me, changed direction when I had to, learned new things, met interesting people, experienced many emotions and mood swings. I loved and lost. I tried and failed. I was an outcast and I was a celebrity. The wind took me places I would have otherwise never gone. I often felt as though I was an observer watching and learning as life sped by. The internet made me a scholar with a universe of information at my finger tips. I created characters I loved, places I wanted to be, life as I would have it. I am, and will always be, a writer. Janet Sue Terry
is a widow, mother of seven, grandmother of eight, great grandmother
of one, a published author of two contemporary romance novels, Possibilities
and Resolutions and the President of Just My Best, Inc. a publishing
company she founded in 2001.For more information about this author
visit http://www.janetsueterry.com.
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To contact us: Primary Business Address 1746 Dailey Rd Wilmington, Ohio 45177 Phone: 937-987-9948 Fax: 937-987-9949 E-mail:jst@jmbpub.com
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