PATRICIA WATTS, AUTHOR

I’ve had a passion for writing since I was a girl. I wrote my first novel when I was 13, in longhand on notebook paper.  It was a sappy romance about a teen girl meeting Paul McCartney, my favorite Beatle, the two falling in love, getting married, living happily ever after. It was called “And I Love Him.” (I told you it was sappy.) A few years later, when I was attending an all-girls Catholic high school, I had a crush on a handsome, young priest. I sent him tortuous love poems signed with a pseudonym. As an adult I became a journalist—reporting and editing for newspapers. But my creative writing, my imaginative writing, my passion I put up on a shelf. Through my 20s, my 30s, my 40s, it languished there, through marriage, motherhood, divorce.

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In my mid 50s I was single for the first time since I was 19, my children moved away, I had to adjust to a new job, a new city, I was in debt, scared, alone. But, now on my own, I began to discover myself, what I wanted, what I dared to dream. I began to eye that thing I had put on the shelf. But, whenever, I looked at it, voices popped into my head and stopped me from taking hold of it. “You’re probably not a good fiction writer anyway,” the voices said. “No one will want to read your stories.” And the loudest voice: “You’re too old to start something like that.” Then, I made an offhanded remark to a friend about my dream of writing a novel. Although I didn’t believe in me, he did. He bought me a laptop. I began writing. My first novel was published when I was 60, the second when I was 61, then came the third, fourth, and fifth, and I’m still writing, although I’m a long way from being a renowned author. Who knows what writing milestones I might have reached if I had begun decades ago? Yet, we start where we start. We don’t all peak in our 20s. Maybe I’ll peak at 70 or 90. Wherever that point is, it’s not a fading light I’ve passed long ago but a bright, shining star up ahead, beckoning me forward.