Women Who Write

From the OC Metro, p. 14 – August 9, 2001
By Barbara Demarco-Barrett

"For me, writing something down was the only road out." – Anne Tyler

Allison Johnson of Aliso Viejo was a new mother when she enrolled in my writing class several years ago. At first she said little – hidden was evidence of the tenacity that would help her to become a published author. She hadn't been a student long when she published an essay. Soon came a co-authored book, Your Self-Confident Baby (Wiley). Then, this past April, her hard work paid off: The Way Home (MacMillan), a novel she had worked on in my workshop, was published.

I always tell the people in my UCI Extension classes about Allison, especially those who believe it's always others who find success as writers. Although many of my students are accomplished in their own right – editors, lawyers, doctors, teachers, mothers – they still have difficulty picturing themselves as published authors.

What you need, along with a dose of talent, is perseverance. Allison had that. She put aside her first novel because she could not make it work. No problem; she just started a second, worked on it for three years, and now it's a book.

"Any one of you can publish if you want to badly enough and are willing to work for it," I tell them. And then I talk about other friends who dreamed of being writers and made their dreams happen by starting with extension or community college classes, or going back to school for an MFA.

I tell them about Mission Viejo resident Taylor Smith, author of The Innocents Club (Mira) and three other thrillers, who started right here at UCI by taking Extension classes in fiction writing and forensics. This former Canadian diplomat was once a wide-eyed and hopeful student, too.

Earlene Fowler, author of Arkansas Traveler (Berkeley Prime Crime), eighth in Fowler's Benni Harper mystery series that features quilts and cowboys, is a community college success. The Fountain Valley resident started taking writing classes when she was 27, and 11 community college classes and 10 years later, her first mystery was published. "Without those classes, I'm not sure I would have kept writing," Earlene says. "Unpublished writers have a camaraderie that is a lot harder to find among published writers."

Earlene's last writing instructor, Jo-Ann Mapson, formerly of Costa Mesa and now living in Anchorage, starting publishing novels after receiving her MFA degree. "If a woman wants to write," says Jo-Ann, whose sixth novel, Bad Girl Creek (Simon & Schuster), was just released, "taking a class is a good way to develop the impetus to write. I worked two part-time jobs and eventually taught full time while completing the degree. It was hard, but I just gave up all the nonessential things like TV, reading the paper, cooking, doing laundry, having a social life. That was a great lesson for me because writing novels puts one in the same position: What are you willing to give up to do this thing?"

So, if you must write, stop putting it off and start with a class. You don't have to trek to L.A.; all of the colleges and universities here have formidable instructors teaching a variety of writing classes.

As I tell my son Travis – and try to remind myself daily, "Tomorrow never comes. It's always today."

Check out "Writers on Writing" Thursdays at 5pm on 88.9-FM, KUCI, and on the Internet at www.WritersonWriting.com.