Frankly, I wouldn’t change a thing.

When I started writing for a living it was because I was desperate. I needed an income, validation, and a tide to turn. My life was stuck in a chapter that I was sick of. It was time for a change.

My author-origin story isn’t a secret -- I’ve written about it a lot, and I find myself circling back to the beginnings more often lately. Am I where I wanted to go? Am I the author I set out to be? Should I have corrected the course so hard? What if I had stayed on my original path?

There is an author I was friends with years ago when I was writing young adult fiction. When my agent couldn’t sell my books, I eventually broke up with him and started self-publishing in a whole new genre. She didn’t. She kept working for a trad deal and now has landed six of them. 

Am I a quitter? Yes.