My Writing Journey, by Marie W. Watts

My writing journey has been a long and winding one. It began with what appeared to be a perfectly normal middle-class childhood for the 1950s and 60s in Baytown, Texas. I had two parents who cared about me, a brother 18 months younger than me to fight with, a stay-at-home mom, all the comforts you could possibly want, vacations to interesting places, and a good education.

But it wasn’t normal…. During my preschool years, I knew the name of the stockbroker—Merril, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith—and watched my mother sit by the phone, smoke cigarettes, and talk to her broker. For me, college was expected, and it wasn’t until I was in 7th grade that I realized college was not mandatory!

The other strange thing was that my parents, particularly my dad, had the same aspirations for me as he did for my brother. Apparently, my dad had lived a very sheltered existence until he was shipped to Europe in WWII and didn’t want that for his children. As a small child, I remember standing with him in a phone booth, rain hammering down, and, with his coaching, calling the operator and placing a call to my uncle, telling him when we would arrive.

Along with my brother, I learned to play ball, mowed the lawn, and was expected to excel at school. The rude awakening didn’t come until fourth grade. I’ll never forget standing on the sidelines, watching my brother try out for Little League. One of the other boys attempted to catch a slow grounder, but it rolled between his legs. I became incensed. I could play baseball better than half the boys on the field but wasn’t allowed to try out because I was a girl!

My dad tried to soothe my anger by agreeing to coach a group of my friends in baseball, but the effort didn’t last very long. Time passed. I graduated from college, got married, had children (two fantastic girls who gave me three wonderful grandsons), and then came the divorce during Houston’s oil bust of the 1980s. Jobs were scarce, but I managed to land at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, investigating employment discrimination, eventually remarrying and moving to the private sector as a human resource manager and director. Later I opened my own business, which focused on encouraging diversity and preventing discrimination.

My adolescent dream, however, was never far from my mind. I would envision myself, dressed in my Girl Scout Camp uniform (white shirt, dark green shorts, and green knee socks), patrolling the borders of the island I owned. Occupation—writer.

My non-fiction writing journey began as a soon-to-be divorced mother of two young children, while job hunting during a recession. A friend sent me to visit one of his acquaintances, a dean at a local junior college. We hit it off, and she asked me if I would be interested in co-authoring a textbook.

My first instinct was that I did not have the qualifications. While I had an MBA, my writing experience consisted of school papers and writing a management training program as a subcontractor. Besides being unemployed, I was not a professor! My teaching experience involved teaching a few junior college and private business school courses. Furthermore, I had mostly been out of the workforce for ten years. At that point, my self-confidence was at an all-time low.

I said “yes” and then panicked. I’m so glad I did. Another collaborator joined us, and our textbook was a hit! It has been on the market for nearly 25 years and went to a fourth edition.

My fiction-writing journey, however, hit every pothole imaginable. While my first book, The Space Mouse, circa 1960, met with high praise from my parents, my following four fiction endeavors did not take the market by storm.

Piles of rejections from agents sent my self-assurance spiraling. I developed imposter syndrome—feeling I had no right to call myself a writer and was not talented enough to be one. In other words, a fake.

At one point, I was ready to stop writing. A multi-published author read one of my novels in prepublication and blessed it. This gift gave me the inner strength to continue.

And my writing dream has been realized with the help of my writing community at the Women’s Fiction Writers Association! With three non-fiction and five-fiction books under my belt, I’m working on a family saga about my mother’s ancestry. 

In my weekly blog, “Stories About Life,” I ruminate on everything from my battles with mice to workable solutions to our education crisis. My intent with all my writing is to entertain as well as share new ways of viewing the world around us.

 My life experiences allow me to develop rich, complex characters who resonate with my readers. Their struggles in everyday life are relatable and relevant. My latest work, Tough Trail Home, a novel about a family coming to terms with each other and their new lives, has won six awards, including Outstanding Creator Awards, Top 25 Fiction Books of 2024 (Ranked #18), and the 2024 PenCraft Book Awards for Fiction—Womens Genre’s 1st Place Winner.

I’m a storyteller, a gift I inherited from my mother. Writing allows me to share this passion by telling stories with perceptions about life and living. My current family saga has me beyond excited. As a history buff, I love finding out what was going on in my ancestors’ lives and how much their struggles parallel those we have today. I can’t wait to share this with you!

And the island? It’s my 50 acres in the country!  Dreams really do come true.

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TOUGH TRAIL HOME

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing