The Unexpected Writing Prompt that Began My Career

I never wanted to be a writer much less an author. Two negative experiences in the classroom convinced me I did not have that talent.

In high school, an English teacher I greatly admired reviewed a poem I’d written about the death of my beloved dog. She told me the poem was “maudlin,” a term I immediately looked up and internalized. My writing was “overly sentimental.”

Then in my freshman English composition course, this straight-A student scraped by with a B minus. The comment that stuck with me: “your writing lacks clarity and focus.”

So writer was something I’d never in a million years imagined I’d call myself—until I became one in a million.

On February 12, 1997, nine days after my divorce was final, I woke up with strange shooting sensations in my legs. In six hours, I was paralyzed by transverse myelitis, a rare inflammation of the spinal cord at affects one in a million.

I was 38 years old with four children ages 3, 4, 6, and 9, two with special needs that included autism, and epilepsy. I’d already coped with the accidental death of my seventeen-year old brother when I was twenty and managed my kids’ issues well enough that I’d decided to end a marriage that wasn’t working. I was ready to begin again and find someone who wanted to share my nutty life with me.

But writing was never part of my life game plan. I was a survivor, not a writer.

Until I had to write to survive.

Before paralysis, I was a high-strung sales gal who ran on deadlines and quotas and way too much coffee. I’d exceled early in a ten-year career with IBM and after the kids were born, I was back in the trenches, doing marketing for an outplacement firm. I put my head down and l plowed through the hectic pace of working and raising a family.

Until I couldn’t. Paralysis froze my life. It forced me to sit still and rethink what was possible.

Fortunately, in 1997 email was just beginning to take hold.  My first experience writing about my life began as a response to an old high school friend who found me. His subject heading proved to be the writing prompt that both saved me from isolation and launched my writing career.  

“Is that you?” he wrote.

One email at a time, I updated him about my kids, my divorce, my paralysis, and the adjustments I’d had to make.

Then a funny thing happened. With no social media at that time to assist, I began to collect email addresses, copy and paste my stories, and send them out to friends and family. Then they shared with their friends and families. One North Carolina buddy noted, “Becky, do you realize you have readers?”

I was shocked.  

Moment 1: I guess my writing was good enough to have readers.

Then one “reader” suggested I submit to The Baltimore Sun the story I’d written about playing soccer with my four-year-old son—from the wheelchair. It was published! In the Op-Ed section, above the fold, with an illustration! That column led to a newspaper column, “From Where I Sit,” I wrote for 12 years that led to another column I wrote about my daughter with autism, “Tuesdays with Madison” that led to another column that I still write, “Looking Homeward,” as well as my current weekly email newsletter, “Thoughtful Thursdays.”

Moment 2: I guess my writing was good enough to be published.

Meanwhile, more than one reader suggested I write a book. Why not? So, I educated myself on the process.

• The query letter: Although I’d been told agents reject 99% of all query letters, she accepted mine.
• The book proposal: Mindful again of the 99% rejection rate for those submissions, I wrote a 70-page book proposal. She accepted mine. I signed a contract in 1999.  

Moment 3: I guess my writing was good enough to be accepted by a literary agent.

However, even though she shopped the book diligently, she couldn’t find a publisher for it. She released me from the contract. Devastated, I struggled with rewrites for years. Then in 2010, I went to a writers’ conference. My submission was recognized by one editor who said my story was powerful, but encouraged me then, and later in follow-up emails, to try a different form: memoir.

Moment 4: I guess my writing was good enough to be recognized and nurtured by professionals.  

Once again, I educated myself, including a two-year Creative Non-fiction program at Stanford, and after a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, Rethinking Possible was published. It took me nearly twenty years to write her.

So yes, I AM and writer and I AM an author.

What did I learn in this process? My sister has a saying that helps.

“Just because they say it, doesn’t make it so!”

I think this is a worthy question to consider, especially when pursuing creative endeavors. What messages have we received that just ain’t so? How can we test them? Affirm them? Improve ourselves in the process?  

Through this book-birthing process, one instructor pushed us to pinpoint the reason we write.

I write, I discovered, to remind myself of what I believe: “Life can be good, no matter what.” Each week, regardless of other writing projects, I look for inspiration that affirms that belief and share it on my Thoughtful Thursdays.

Now, I HAVE to write. It keeps my mind connected to my heart and allows me to engage with others despite this unwanted wheelchair life.

How about you? Why do you write? Have you had to overcome negative messages to do so? What works for you?

—

Rebecca Faye Smith Galli (Becky) is a former IBM sales rep who turned to writing after a bout with the flu in 1997 left her paralyzed from transverse myelitis, a rare inflammation of the spinal cord that affects 1 in a million. Her book, Rethinking Possible, A Memoir of Resilience, chronicles her journey of love, loss, and healing through this and other significant losses including her seventeen-year-old brother’s death; her son’s degenerative disease and subsequent death; her daughter’s autism; her divorce; and only nine days later, her paralysis. In 2000, The Baltimore Sun published her first column about playing soccer with her son—from the wheelchair that led to a career in op-ed writing and three monthly columns.

With over 400 published columns and a completed memoir, she launched, Thoughtful Thursdays, a weekly column for her subscriber family that shares what’s inspired her to stay positive. She also periodically contributes to Midlife Boulevard, Nanahood, and The Mighty. Join her Thoughtful Thursdays family at www.beckygalli.com/signup.

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RETHINKING POSSIBLE, Rebecca Faye Smith Galli

Becky Galli was born into a family that valued the power of having a plan. With a pastor father and a stay-at-home mother, her 1960s southern upbringing was bucolic―even enviable. But when her brother, only seventeen, died in a waterskiing accident, the slow unraveling of her perfect family began.

Though grief overwhelmed the family, twenty-year-old Galli forged onward with her life plans―marriage, career, and raising a family of her own―one she hoped would be as idyllic as the family she once knew.

But life had less than ideal plans in store. There was her son’s degenerative, undiagnosed disease and subsequent death; followed by her daughter’s autism diagnosis; her separation; and then, nine days after the divorce was final, the onset of the transverse myelitis that would leave Galli paralyzed from the waist down.

Despite such unspeakable tragedy, Galli maintained her belief in family, in faith, in loving unconditionally, and in learning to not only accept, but also embrace a life that had veered down a path far different from the one she had envisioned. At once heartbreaking and inspiring, Rethinking Possible is a story about the power of love over loss and the choices we all make that shape our lives ―especially when forced to confront the unimaginable.

Buy the book HERE

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing