Because of Reese Witherspoon

I am a writer because of Reese Witherspoon … sort of. That make not make much sense, but I thought I’d share my writing journey so far, and to be perfectly honest, a lot of it does have to with Reese Witherspoon.

Let me explain.

I always wanted to be a writer. I used to write stories when I was younger. I wanted to be an English professor and write books. But that didn’t happen and life got in the way, and it wasn’t until 2018 that I started writing (fiction) again. I didn’t set out to start writing again. I had an idea that I couldn’t get out of my head. I thought about it for weeks until had grown from “What if…” to a full blown story. So finally in January of 2018 I opened a word document and started typing. (I’m getting to Reese, I swear).

I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing for several months. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I didn’t have any plans to try to get published, I just couldn’t stop writing. The first person I told was my husband. And his response was, “Of course you should write a book.” I believe it was toward the beginning of September and I had something like 50,000 words written. (Most of those words were re-written, but that’s not the point).

So towards the end of September, my mom and I went to Nashville to see Reese Witherspoon on her book tour for Whiskey in a Teacup. She had a discussion with Ann Patchett (there was also a meet and greet which I didn’t do because it was very expensive and I am still a little salty about it but that isn’t what today’s post is about).

There was a question and answer portion, and one of the audience questions was “How do you decide which projects you take?” And Reese’s answer was (and I’m paraphrasing obviously) that she always went with the ones that scared her. That she wanted to push herself so she took the most challenging roles.

It was one of those things that really stuck with me. At the time, I was writing a fashion and lifestyle blog. And I realized it didn’t challenge me the way writing my manuscript did. It didn’t make me excited or scare me. So on the drive home, I told my mom I was writing a book. When I got home, I messaged my writer friend Jennie and she was kind enough to Skype with me for like 2 hours to help me figure out how to get more serious about it.

And then the following January (2019), I stopped blogging and focused my energy on my manuscript because I didn’t have time to do both. I also decided that I would try to get published, since I was spending SO much time and energy on it. I let people read it, I worked on it. I kept writing.

In case you were wondering, I haven’t queried yet. I’m hoping to this fall (not with my first ms but my second). I’ve written 3 complete manuscripts, zero drafted a fourth and applied to several mentorship programs.