What was the genesis of my authoring aspirations? I could point to nine years ago when I started Bone Cold Truth. It felt like a lawnmower engine had finally turned over. Sputtering starts, mowed a few lines, carved a swath I could call a chapter, then three, a tiny corner of a section of a large field. And the lawnmower engine stopped. No fuel, no time.

While I ponder the last chapters and the epilogue of my first book, I am already two chapters into my next book. A floodgate opened, one that, in reality, started when I was five. I wrote a “book” then, crayon on construction paper, pictures of a swing set and some of my sisters drawn in crayon, each picture with a sentence, telling the story. I folded the pages and stapled them together, made a cover design, and that was my first book.

Life rolled on. My day job aka career grew like a weed, the days were 18 hours long, shepherding a national chain of manufacturing enterprises, sitting on boards of multiple organizations, chairwoman of two… things that just kept rolling forward were also rolling over my life, flattening my options and my time. Suddenly decades had passed, and I was at one of those major turning points that comes once or three times in a person’s life: for some it is marriage, or a baby, for others it is a divorce or a questioning of one’s path in life. That last was mine.

“I’m in the ‘What’s next?’ phase of my career. ~ Oprah Winfrey“

Don’t get me wrong, my work had been immensely fulfilling, achieving more than most in this country, a workaholic CEO with a loving husband, incredibly bright and talented siblings, and a little bungalow I could call home. It was more a gentle nudge of a question. I even had a dream that I was reading a paperback book, enjoying it thoroughly, and the author was me.

For some executives, the role is not who we are, though it becomes who we are. Perhaps for all executives this is true for a while, or for some, their very identity becomes one with their job role and changes their DNA permanently. Science says we carry some code from our ancestors, our natural bents and talents, in our cells. I am sure we carry the imprint of our current careers in our genes as well.

Some are content staying the course and eventually retiring from the role and then finding themselves or just killing time with hobbies long set aside for such a time and space. For me, it was an internal conversation that went something like this: “Self, what are you doing? You’ve lost your spark as the demands of your career have lightened, you have experimented with some other budding career choices built around your talents. You have talents, but do they really fulfill you, turning those talents into a new job? No, they don’t. Face it, your mind just won’t shut off.

You lay awake at night creating plot lines. You see an unsolved kidnapping and imagine all that transpired before, during and after the event, even if it remains unsolved. Self, you remember that terrible thing you saw in an airport once? How it made you feel something was wrong and how you had to write about it (the premise for my second book, The Barren Trail). Self, you need to try one more thing… just one more time. Crack open the three chapters you wrote nine years ago. This is your chance. Does it feel like inspiration?”

What do I think now? Sometimes, you try to force space in your life and mind, but the universe has another idea. Other plans and experiences are meant for you. If I could tell my younger self of nine years ago one thing, I would say, “Don’t stress over that.” And then I would say, “Remember when you were five, and wrote your first book? It wasn’t ready for publication. You had to grow.”

Life experiences become fodder for the future, books whose origins connect to the life you have lived, the experiences you have had.

Dive deep into the lake of life that stands in your way. Every now and then, jump in a boat, see if the engine churns to life and rockets ahead. If not, press on, keep moving forward, plowing and swimming through your life, putting your ideas to paper, telling yourself those thoughts are enough for now. Just keep priming the engine. Someday, you will start writing the book and it will take off like it has a life of its own, eating the field in front of it, propelling you forward with each page, until you are flying.

Yes, making the turn from workaholic to writer was a grueling, slow speed tractor turn on a huge muddy field. The initial swerve took me through interior design, coding, financial reports for non-profits, and finally, grinding its way into a wide-open field, the tractor transformed into that jet. The field became a runway, and the sky was wide open.

PS: Just like Samantha, I love mixing metaphors….