I’ve been writing since 1977, to one degree or another, but when I was doing free lance, I seldom talked about my work. Even some of my best friends didn’t know I wrote.

During those days, I wrote devotionals, articles, and short stories, researched different magazines, and sent the editors what I thought might interest them. They either bought them or not. It wasn’t necessary for me to talk about my writing in order to have someone buy my work.

After I started writing books, I had to do more advertising and book events in order to sell my books, but I still don’t bring up my writing to strangers or acquaintances unless there’s a reason. So my health professionals and other acquaintances often don’t know I’m an author.

At the end of December, I had an appointment with my PCP to get a release for one of the numerous procedures I would have in the New Year. During that appointment, my PCP’s nurse asked if I had any projects planned for the year to come. My answer took him by surprise.

I said, “I’m a writer and I want to finish a couple of books I’ve been working on.” 

I’d had plenty of reasons to visit my PCP the past few years, thus also seeing her nurse, but there simply had never been a reason to talk about my writing. R’s eyes widened and he said, “You’re a writer? What do you write?”

So I told him about my free lance days and my historical fiction series set in Sandy Lake. R told me he lives in Clarks Mills (near Sandy Lake) and asked if my children had graduated from Lakeview High School, where he had also graduated. (They had but quite a few years before R graduated.) It was a pleasant discussion.

R finished his notes and left the room. A little while later, there was a gentle tap on the door, and I thought it was my PCP–until R stuck his head into the room and asked, “Who is Sarah?”

At first I assumed he was talking about our granddaughter, whom I had mentioned earlier, until he added, “I Googled you!”

I chuckled and realized he was asking about the Sarah in my Sarah’s Legacy Series set in Sandy Lake. “She was the original owner of the house we owned for twenty years. Many of the characters in my Series are based on people who lived in that house.”

R wasn’t finished. “And you wrote over one hundred songs?”

That was a season of our lives that seems like a century ago, but it’s included in the information about me on the back of my books. “My husband and I did a long time ago.”

R has been very kind to me during the challenging years I’ve been through, and I was blessed by the interest he showed in my work. Somehow it lent credibility to my secret life as a writer that he had cared enough to Google me!

Then yesterday, a doctor with whom Donn had an appointment made a chance comment that not only prompted me to mention that I’m a writer, but also led to me ask him a lot of questions.

Dr. M was typing notes on his computer and Donn asked him, “Do you like the new way of taking notes on the computer or did you like the old, handwritten way better?”

He said he liked the new way because it was more concise. Then he added, “I do some personal writing, and for that, I prefer the old handwritten way. I don’t feel like I can compose on a computer.”

Of course, that sparked my interest, and I said, “I’m a writer, and I used to feel that way. I wrote everything in shorthand and didn’t think I could compose on a typewriter, but now I can’t imagine trying to write books by hand. I wouldn’t be able to cut and paste!” Then I added, “What do you write?”

“Oh, I write in my journals. I have so many journals!”

I laughed and answered, “I have a closet full of journals!”

Dr. M nodded. “I figure someday my children will go through my journals and think I didn’t care about them at all because I don’t write about them!”

“I know!” I understood that. “Sometimes I look back at my journals and realize I wrote on their birthday or another important date and never mentioned them!”

Then Dr. M told us that at one time he actually stopped being a doctor so he could write! “But then I needed money!”

Laughing, I responded, “Donn taught at Penn State and made money so I could write!”

Dr. M seemed reluctant to tell us what he wrote about but finally said he had actually written a book. When I asked again what he wrote, he said, “It’s about a badger. But I never did anything with it. I made corrections and then I didn’t like the corrections that I made.”

So I told him about the online critique group I’d found where I’d learned so much. He said the people in the group he’d found were really nasty, so I explained that to be in the ACFW critique group, you had to go through their orientation first and if you didn’t abide by their guidelines, you were out. He said that’s what he needs.

Dr. M finished his notes and printed out a copy for Donn. As we were going out the door, he said, “And I should ask you sometime how did you get an agent?”

By this time we were standing in the hall as I told him about coming to the conclusion that I didn’t want someone telling me when these books had to be done—I had a retired husband and a small granddaughter that I wanted to spend time with, so we decided to self-publish. He had questions about that too, and I shared what the man who had been interested in being my agent had told me. The doctor said I’d given him a lot to think about.

 As Donn and I said good by and walked away, I couldn’t help but think that Dr. M’s patients would probably be as surprised as my PCP’s nurse to learn that their doctor has the secret life of a writer!

Thank you, Father, for the gift of communicating with those that we meet in our every day lives. Help us to be alert for opportunities to get to know people at a deeper level than we ever have before. Amen.