From the time I was a little girl, the word "writer" held a special
significance to me. I loved the word. I loved the idea of making up
stories. When I was about twelve, I bought a used Olivetti manual
typewriter from a little hole in the wall office machine place in
Middletown, CT called Peter's Typewriters. It weighed about twenty
pounds and was probably thirty years old. I pounded out the worst
kind of adolescent drivel, imposing my imaginary self on television
heroes of the time: Bonanza, Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Star Trek.
Those are my earliest memories of my secret life of writing. For
reasons I cannot really fathom, I never pursued writing as a
vocation. Although I majored in English, I didn't focus on writing
and it wasn't really until I was first married that I hauled out my
old Olivetti and began to thump away at my first novel. This was,
as I recall, an amorphous thinly plotted excercise in putting
sentences together and has mercifully disappeared in some move or
another. I didn't try anything more adventurous than some short
stories and a lot of newsletters for various things I belonged to
until we moved to Martha's Vineyard and I bought my first computer.
My little "Collegiate 2" IBM computer was about as advanced as the
Olivetti was in its heyday but it got me writing again and this
time with some inner determination that I was going to succeed at
this avocation. I tapped out two novels on this machine with its
fussy little printer. Like the first one, these were wonderful
absorbing exercises in learning how to write.
What happened then is the stuff of day time soap opera. Writing is
a highly personal activity and for all of my life I'd kept it
secret from everyone but my husband, who, at the time, called what
I did nights after the kids went to bed, my "typing." Until, quite
by accident, I discovered that here on the Vineyard nearly everyone
has some avocation in the arts. Much to my delight, I discovered a
fellow closet-writer in the mom of my kids' best friends. For the
very first time in my life I could share the struggle with another
person. I know now that writers' groups are a dime a dozen and I
highly recommend the experience, but with my friend Carole, a
serendipitious introduction to a "real writer", Holly Nadler,
resulted in my association with my agent. Holly read a bit of my
"novel" and liked what she read, suggested I might use her name and
write to her former agent. I did and the rest, as they say, is
history.
Not that it was an overnight success. The novel I'd shown Holly
never even got sent to Andrea. But a third, shorter, more evolved
work was what eventually grew into Beauty with the guidance of
Andrea and her associates at the Jane Rotrosen Agency.
The moral of the story: keep at it. Keep writing the bad novels to
learn how to write the good ones. And, yes, it does help to know
someone. Andrea might have liked my work, but the path was oiled by
the introduction Holly Nadler provided.
Hawke's Cove is my second published novel, although there is a
"second" second novel in a drawer, keeping good company with the
other "first" novels.
"Entertainment Weekly" Lovable.
"People" Wilson has recast the classic story with a modern
setting..."Beauty" sails along.
"Women's Own" Beauty...will leave tears in your eyes and hope in
your heart.
![]() |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
![]() |