Keeping the Writing Dream Alive

By Arlene Bice, arlenebice.com

It was the writers’ oft-mentioned fourth-grade assignment of detailing my family history that first set my heart on fire to be a writer. Back in the ‘50s, I loved the writing portion of all my school assignments. In high school, my work earned an invitation to work on the school newspaper, but an early marriage dashed any idea of being a writer.

Eventually, I became a stay-at-home mom of four, struggling to make ends meet with no room to think of paying for classes of any kind, and a husband who denied me the right. Being a professional writer was not an option open to me, but I kept focus on the written word through letter writing.

Life was very different pre-Internet. I wanted to be a storyteller or poet, but didn’t know how to begin. I was an avid reader, a collector of books, and kept the dream alive with a few friendships with impassioned writers.

As my kids grew older, I found temp jobs during school hours at elementary and middle school libraries. Always scrolling the “Want” ads in the newspaper, I later applied and was hired at the library of Rider College (now University) library. At least I was surrounded by books. I eventually shed the husband, but then my responsibilities increased. Because a higher income became more important, I changed jobs and waited tables from midnight to 7 a.m. I was the sole supporter of my four sons and a widowed mother. I buried the niggling tug to write, but it still lay beneath the surface.

That desire may have faded, but it never left me completely.

Soon, I moved on to working as a wholesale liquor sales rep, with my own $1,000 union card, one of only two women in the field. When the company was sold, I worked as a bartender. I finally got my high school equivalency certificate, worked in real estate sales as a broker, and then graduated to appraising for both residential and commercial properties. Writing was required in the appraisals, but it was not quite the writing I wanted to do. That job ended when interest rates changed and the market fell. Next, I opened a gift shop, and with my eternal love of books, expanded it to a bookshop of new, used, and rare books.

A writing group asked if they could meet in my bookshop after hours. “Sure,” I told them. They repeatedly invited me to sit in, but I thought it was too late for me. I thought the idea of being a writer was gone. I thought I was too old at 60. Then, a book salesman walked into my shop selling an Arcadia Publishing Co. Images of America series featuring a town just south of ours.

“We’re the town that has a great history!” I exclaimed. “We had two Signers of the Declaration living here!” I continued to rattle on about my great and wonderful Bordentown (NJ).

“Would you like to write a book for us?” he asked. And so, the dream was not dead, just asleep, and this salesman woke it up! Arcadia sent a pamphlet on exactly how to set up the book. That’s how I learned. My first book for them was published in 2002, followed by three more. Once that door was opened, there was no closing it again.

From that first book, I was inspired to write something different, this time influenced by my customers. Word went through the grapevine that I lived with ghosts in my house. That led to customers discussing ghosts in their homes, which led to my creating a Ghost Tour of Bordentown as a fundraiser for my business group. Tour folks wandered into my shop asking for a booklet about the ghost stories. I researched a nearby town’s monthly ghost tour and read the thin book about their resident ghosts. “Look at this,” I told the customer who stopped in to chat. “Look at these errors and misspellings! I could do better than this!”

“Why don’t you?” he commented. So, I did. My first indie-published book, “Ghosts of Bordentown,” 66 pages, covered 19 stories. My customer challenged me, and the writer came out victorious! It was expensive, but the ache was still present. It was another entrance into the writing life.

Through the writers’ group meeting in my shop, I joined the International Women Writing Guild (IWWG) and attended their annual conferences every year for the following 10 years. It set me on fire! We were 500 women at Skidmore College (I finally got to college) with nothing but talk about writing; classes about writing; and new, lifetime connections with writers. They were the most exhilarating times of my life. I vibrated, surrounded by others who loved words.

At that time, I expected to live out my life selling books. My life was perfect in my mind. That idea crashed when I “received” a message that woke me at 3 a.m. The voice told me, and my two cats, that I had to sell everything, which included an apartment house and property, and move.

That meant I also had to leave the three writing groups and a book discussion group I led. My bookshop was a social destination where I held wine & cheese parties, social and seasonal events, author book signings, and talks. I didn’t want to leave this life I loved!

Everything was sold and transferred within three weeks. A journalist friend walked into my shop to catch up on the latest. He was excited to buy my bookshop business, rent my apartment, and he even bought my Camaro. I was moving to the forests of North Carolina to become what I was meant to be — a full-time writer/publisher, and co-founder of First Friday Open Mic nights, etc., etc., etc.

Thinking back on those days, I realize the various jobs I held fed me a wealth of material and experience to draw from, but all that social/business clutter at the bookshop interfered with my being a full-time writer. The burning in my gut to write never left; it just lay there quietly waiting to be awakened. Age was no matter.

Lesson learned: life wasn’t over at 60. It was time to become the writer I was meant to be! My just-released book, “Poet Shot Dead,” will soon be followed by my first genealogy book, “Leafing the Family Tree: Mayflower Thru the Revolutionary War.” 

It goes to prove that when a burning desire to write is inside you, time does not dissolve it. When opportunities arise, step in and take charge. Know that when you are a writer at heart, writing will find its way to the surface by seeming coincidence or through your own perseverance, and then it just goes on and on…

Arlene S. Bice has published dozens of books. She received the Florence Poets Society Poet of Distinction Award and the Annual Literary Oakley Hall Award. Her poems were performed at the Kirby Theatre, and she has added short stories to her list of paranormal, historical, and poetry writings. She lives in Farmville, Virginia.