STORIES BEHIND THE PATH TO PUBLICATION
By D.G. Thomas, DBN Magazine Editor-in-Chief
I think there are a lot of people walking around with dreams they quietly put away years ago. They didn’t necessarily stop wanting those things. Life simply became louder. Careers happened. Families happened. Responsibilities happened. Sometimes other people convinced them their dreams weren’t realistic, and eventually those dreams got placed somewhere in the background.
That’s what stood out to me when I revisited my interview with Edie D. Browning, author of Me Here Without You Now. Edie had always wanted to write. As a little girl, she made up stories in her head about practically anything, even turning something as ordinary as the beeping of an alarm clock into a story. At 12, she wrote a story about a family winning an ox in a raffle, and with encouragement from her teacher, it was published in her local newspaper.
But becoming an author didn’t seem like a realistic career in her family. When Edie told her parents she wanted to write, their response was essentially that people didn’t read anymore and she needed to get a “proper job.” So instead of pursuing writing professionally, Edie became an English teacher. She continued writing, but she kept it mostly to herself. When I interviewed her, Edie described what happened in a way that I think will resonate with a lot of people: “Life just happens and you put your dreams on a shelf.” That sentence stayed with me.
I think we sometimes look back at the things we haven’t accomplished and assume the years that passed are evidence that we didn’t want them badly enough. If you really wanted to write the book, wouldn’t you have written it by now? If becoming an author really mattered, wouldn’t you have found the time? I don’t think life always works that neatly.
Sometimes a dream gets pushed aside because something else needs your attention. You build a career. You take care of people. You pay the bills. You make practical decisions. Years can pass while something you once wanted very badly sits quietly in the background. But putting something on a shelf isn’t the same as throwing it away. Eventually, Edie decided to take her dream back down.
After stepping away from teaching for a while, she did some soul-searching and decided to finally give writing the book a try. What I love about that moment is how she reframed what she was risking. The worst thing that could happen, she decided, was that she would write a terrible book nobody wanted to read. But at least she would have written it.
I think that realization is more important than it may initially sound because aspiring authors can create an enormous list of things that could go wrong before they ever write the first chapter. What if nobody buys it? What if people don’t like it? What if I can’t get published? What if I’m not good enough? After enough of those questions, keeping the dream safely on the shelf can start to feel a lot easier than finding out what would actually happen if you tried.
Edie eventually stopped requiring herself to know the outcome before she began. Instead of needing some guarantee that the book would be successful, she decided that writing it was worth doing simply because she had always wanted to do it. And she wrote it. That book became Me Here Without You Now, a “love story after the love story” about what happens after someone has already found “the one,” lost that person, and has to figure out what life and love look like afterward.
There’s something I find especially fitting about Edie eventually becoming a published author after spending so many years as an English teacher. The dream didn’t disappear because she chose another profession. She didn’t stop loving stories. She didn’t even stop writing. That part of her was still there, waiting for the time when she was ready to give it another chance.
When I asked Edie what advice she would give someone who wanted to get published, she encouraged aspiring authors not to become overwhelmed by the enormity of writing an entire novel. Start with the first chapter or even the first scene and take the process one small step at a time. I think that advice fits her own story beautifully. Maybe taking a dream off the shelf doesn’t have to begin with knowing exactly how you’re going to become a published author. Maybe it begins with something much smaller. You write the first scene. Then you write the next one.
When I look at Edie’s story through the lens of The Author’s Journey, I keep coming back to that shelf. She put her dream there while she went on with her life, but she never completely got rid of it. Years later, she was still able to reach back for something she had wanted since childhood and finally give herself the opportunity to find out what might happen if she tried.
I think that’s the lesson worth holding onto for anyone who has been saying, “I always wanted to write a book.” Wanted doesn’t necessarily have to remain past tense. Maybe you meant to start five years ago. Maybe it was ten years ago. Maybe, like Edie, you chose a practical career and tucked the dream somewhere in the background while life happened. The shelf will still be there. And so will the dream, until you decide to take it down and finally write the first scene.
Read Edie’s author interview on DBN Magazine.
The Author’s Journey: Stories Behind the Path to Publication are from the DBN Magazine archives. Editor D.G. Thomas revisits past author interviews with published authors, sharing her reflections on the stories they shared behind their paths to publication—and the lessons that may inspire the next generation of authors.
Want to Share Your Author Journey? Are you a published author with a story to tell? Be featured in a DBN Magazine Author Spotlight and share the story behind your book, your path to publication, and what you’ve learned along the way. [Apply for an Author Spotlight]
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