“You only care about Art,” offered a grade two student at my school. “That’s what we all think.” Now returned to part-time teaching because the royalties of my one published novel pays out hobby money rather than indent upon household bills, I was on yard duty – the time when I trod tiredly at work, keeping close watch on my allotted area of the school. To my increasing pleasure, I usually have company to chat with– a little troupe of students from the nine (prep to grade two) classes I teach at my local State school.

“You only care about Art...” First taken aback by this student consensus about what makes me tick, I found myself flustering out, “Oh, I care about many things!” Then I became more thoughtful, remembering another time and place, when my very annoyed and then teenage daughter rapped out, “You care only about writing!” Of course, she was at that stage of life. Knowing her words reflected teenage angst and her surface frustrations with a far too often distracted mother, knew I’d just be wasting my breath to argue beyond a firm denial. My children know the buttons to push to get my attention; they also know there is nothing in my life more important than them.

Still, I hold close to my heart certain strong beliefs and I really shouldn’t feel surprised that their vibrations are picked up my own kids and students. There is a purpose to this life of ours. All of us are on a pilgrimage up the mountain, the quest to really know ourselves, discovering the things we must tap into for a complete life.

Via life’s choices, we sometimes stumble, getting lost along the way. We take trails away from the main road, dropping back on the lower tracks or become very stuck, for a time, on seemingly safe plateaus. But these detours, taken in the right ways, return us to the road only richer.

I knew I wanted to write by eight. At ten-years-old, I won my first poetry competition. After that, the road to call myself a writer became very rocky and almost impossible to see, with pitfalls at almost every step. By seventeen, I put aside my writing dream for “real life.” I met my husband not long afterwards, married him at eighteen and had our first child ten months later. But my writing dream never left me. Its lack of fulfilment blighted my happiness, leaving me open to true despair. It took the traumatic birth of my second son at twenty-two to awake and set me free from this dark half-life.

Recovering from my son’s birth, I soul-searched about life and about all the choices I made in my twenty-two years of life. I always wanted to be a wife and mother, but I also wanted to be a novelist. Growing up, very few adults believed in me or encouraged my desire to write. My English teacher, in my last year of High school, told me I would never write a novel. Her off-hand verdict hurt so deeply I left school and became a shop assistant, rather than even attempt finding my hoped for job as a journalist cadet. Before the judgement of this teacher, I thought becoming a journalist would step me closer to the career my heart so ached for.

To be fair to her, my writing at seventeen lacked a great deal – awful handwriting (that hasn’t changed!), dreadful grammar twinned to inability and desire to self-edit. It took my life’s various detours, marriage, children, and university to turn and hone my various attempts to write into real writing.

In blithe innocence, many years ago, I started writing my first novel by seizing hold of a poem that first ‘spoke’ to me in my teenage years. This poem gave me a voice of a long dead Tudor poet who told of his love for Anne Boleyn. The Greek chorus of a lifetime of doubters only added more fire to my belly to prove to myself that I could do it – and, by a lot of hard work, I did. Only holding my children for the first time compares better to the moment I knew Dear Heart, How Like You This? was finally finished.

I am writing my second novel no longer innocent – just laden with knowledge of the mountain climb I must conquer before this new novel is ready for publication. Excepting for those days when I let those dogs of doubt pull down my confidence, I’m old enough now to feel a sense of gratitude to all the people who said it wasn’t worth me trying to aim high or try to achieve my dreams. I hold the truth in my own hands; it’s up to me. I have to be willing to work hard at making my dreams come true. And life experience has taught me working hard to attain my dreams equals cause and effect – the agony and ecstasy of achievement – the realisation of true inner joy. Once you’ve found that in life it is so very difficult to lose; my well of joy just seems to keep on spilling over.

Because I know the reality of this joy I passionately want the same for all the young folk coming come under my radar. I want them to know to never let go of their dreams.

One of my most favourite sayings is, ‘Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it, but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself.’ Believe me – I know it is not easy to pull yourself up from foothills or the safe plateaus of our very own and very personal mountain, but why deprive yourself of the higher view and the sense of accomplishment to see how far you’ve come in life?

Human beings all possess a creative force. Possessing myriad ways to live a life to completeness, this creative force is something we all must connect to and develop throughout their lives. Once we do, we start climbing to the apex.