Turning a Someday into a Today
There’s a Someday in all of us. Someday I will learn to play the piano. Someday I will start my own business. Someday I will write a book. Someday I will get out of the job I hate and find my dream job.
Turning your Someday into Today can happen. And does happen! But, it takes three things:
Actually doing something about!
Time!
Passion!
Judith Marshall is the author of Husbands May Come and Go but Friends are Forever. This book was rumbling around inside of her, but was a Someday. As you will see in the interview below it didn’t become a Today until there was a catalyst to get her off her proverbial butt, the commitment to the time it took to get her thoughts on paper, and the passion about what she was writing.
Not only is her Someday book now a Today book, it has just been optioned for a movie!
Eliza asked:
I was reading the About Me! on your website and I had a Laugh Out Loud moment:
But soon life got in the way and it wasn’t until years later, when I had finished reading Rebecca Well’s book, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, that I slammed the book shut and exclaimed, “That bitch wrote my book!” (No offense, Ms. Wells)
So many of us have creative dreams that we put on the back burner because life gets in the way. Once you got past “That bitch … ” (grin), what caused you to sit down and really make writing your book a priority?
Judith answered:
Seriously, reading Rebecca Well’s book was the push I needed to quit my day job and write. I wasn’t getting any younger and I needed to get started while I had at least some of my brain cells left.
Eliza asked:
It took five years to go from typing your first word to getting your book published. There are so many aspiring writers out there, but I am sure many of them quit when they get a reality check on how long it takes. Actually, it is no different than starting a business. It takes 3 to 5 years to consider it a success. I am sure you had periods of self-doubt and ‘what the heck am I thinking?’. What kept driving you forward for the entire five years?
Judith answered:
Actually, it took twelve years. I started the book in 1997 when I left Corporate America and established my own Human Resources consulting practice. But I didn’t write full time – that would have been too much like work. As for what kept driving me, I was committed to the story, plus I’m a very tenacious person by nature. However, I did get sick of it about five years in, so I put it away and wrote my second novel, “Staying Afloat.” When I went back to “Husbands,” I could look at it with fresh eyes.
Eliza asked:
If one piece of advice keeps popping up for writers, it is write what you know. How much of ‘what you know’ shines through in Husbands May Come and Go but Friends are Forever?
Judith answered:
Although the book is fiction, many of the elements are based on my life’s experiences. Like my protagonist, I, too, have been blessed with the friendship of a group of feisty women I first met in high school. We complain, we console, and we can talk our way through virtually any crisis. We know how to raise hell and how to raise children. I wrote this book for them.
Your turn:
What triggered you to turn a Someday into a Today?
More information
Find out more about Judith and Husbands May Come and Go but Friends are Forever at http://judithmarshall.net/
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