Impatience

I grew blue impatiens as a houseplant because it had an indigo-ultraviolet aura that was beguiling but very hard to see.

I’ve wanted to be a writer, for a long time, and the prospect of success was like that flower–beguiling, And hard to see how it might happen.

One day I turned a corner, and just started writing. Childhood memories. Travel jo urnals. Limericks. A novel. Short stories. Another novel. Then the prospect of publishing become the new beguiling glow.

Since before Covid I’ve been workshopping my novels at the Burlington Writers’ Workshop. I study Youtube posts from BookFox. I learn about publishing from AuthorMedia.com. I read books about the craft. I wrote short pieces almost every day for two years in a Method Writing group. I started gathering rejections from every publication I knew of. Then I learned there were hundreds I’d never heard of, and cast my net wider.

2026 was the miracle year. I published half a dozen stories. And I’ve self-published that much-revised first novel.

I was an astronomer once. I wrote this:

With a glimmer of faith he has flirted,
Hates dogma that's crudely asserted.
An astronomer knows
That the faintest of glows
Can't be seen unless vision's averted.