My Journey as a writer

I’ve always had an active imagination.  Perhaps it’s the product of being an only child growing up mostly by myself. I only had myself to keep me company, so it almost made sense to delve into an imaginary world.  I’ve often had dialogues between me and someone else playing out in my head, and sometimes I would actually voice a reply.  That is when I started taking my pen to paper and started writing things down.

My first creative work was a poem.  It was an assignment from Mrs. Rita Maselli Boucicaut, my 8th-grade English teacher.  “I am a (blank),” she said. “Choose whatever you want to be, and write a poem about it.”  That is when I crafted “I am a flower”, and I started to feel my gentle stem and delicate leaves quiver as the soft breezes blew and twirled around me…lol.  I got an A, much to my delight.

My second poem came many years later when I was a freshman in college.  I had a major crush on a fellow student studying to be a musician, and my mind started filling up with words.  So much so that I couldn’t sleep one night, which was concerning because I had a mid-term exam the next day.  I needed my rest.  These words haunted me all night until I got out of bed at 3:00 AM, grabbed my pen, and started writing these haunting words in my notebook.  Words that went something like, ” I watched his slim, long fingers meandering gracefully across the keys of the grand piano and started wishing that I, too, was made of ivory…”.  After six pages of giving free rein to my romantic (and sometimes dramatic) thoughts, I was able to settle into a restful sleep.

College is also when I started writing my first novel.  This was a precursor to Nonstop Oslo.  It was my first time writing about my favorite band, A-ha, and its gorgeous lead singer, Morten Harket.  The story was so amusing that my girlfriends wanted to be included in it.  We spent hours at the library giggling over paragraph after paragraph of our adventures in Kongsberg, Norway with the boys from the band instead of studying for our exams.  I still laugh when I think about it. I have no idea what happened to that notebook.

Then came more poems.  Some about the painful side of love, and some about social injustice.  Whatever I was troubled about at the time. And in 1997, at age 32, I came up with ideas for three novels.  Historical romances, my favorite kind. I wasn’t really thinking about writing stories then, but the stories came to me anyway.  I scribbled them down in my journal, and have been living with these characters ever since.  One of my favorite characters is Hildegarde Anne Débussy, aka Annie, from my novel-in-the-making, “Enchanted Gardens” (a working title), which takes place in France, circa 1803, with Haiti’s quest for independence as a backdrop.  Annie’s a level-headed girl,  a bit ahead of her time, and the last thing that she wants is to fall in love and have babies.  (She makes a brief appearance in Nonstop Oslo.) I wrote about 18 chapters of that story over the years, but haven’t been able to dedicate enough time to finish writing it. I hope to change that after this year.

As for the other two story ideas, I haven’t really developed them beyond the general storyline.  I hope that with time, and with your encouragement, I will be able to fully dedicate myself to writing them and bringing these characters to life.  Some of these characters will enchant you, and others you will hate with every fiber of your being.  But let me not be the judge…

I also wrote my first children’s story in 1997, and a few more poems.  In hindsight, that year turned out to be quite a productive one with memorable outputs.  They are all tucked away in old notebooks and files on my computer.  I hope to be able to publish them one day soon and share them with you.

I’ve written a second children’s story since then, and a few more poems over the last few years.  All unpublished. And in October 2015, in anticipation of my trip to Oslo to see A-ha in concert in April 2016, 30 years after I’d seen them in concert in Fort-Lauderdale, Florida, in September 1986, I began to fantasize about meeting Morten Harket, and fellow super-talented musicians, Magne Furuholmen and Pål Waaktaar. And there was born Nonstop Oslo. A book written and published quite by accident.  But a happy one.  At least, to me.