Pursuing a lifelong dream is never an easy task, as today's guest blogger Melissa de la Cruz --- author of the bestselling Au Pairs and Pursuing a lifelong dream is never an easy task, as today's guest blogger Melissa de la Cruz --- author of the bestselling Au Pairs and Blue Bloods series --- can attest. Below, she looks back on her determined, albeit less than straightforward path to becoming a published author and reflects on some of the tough decisions she made along the way.
People often ask me if I knew when I wanted to become a writer. The answer is, I've wanted write ever since I learned to read. My parents were both voracious readers, and they read for the pleasure of it. My dad is seldom without one or two mysteries in hand (if no one's dead in his book, he's not interested in it) and my mom is a general fiction reader (when she was younger, she read all of Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz; now she reads Alice Sebold and Lisa See).
When I was growing up, every Sunday my parents took us to church, then to brunch at a fabulous hotel, then to the bookstore, where we were allowed to buy any and every book we wanted. I had almost all of Enid Blyton's books, and even though my mom looked doubtfully at my V. C. Andrews collection, she didn't stop me from buying or reading it.
In elementary and high school, I was always on the newspaper and yearbook clubs, and I wrote a lot of poetry and short stories, and attempted to start many a novel. In college, I took as many creative writing classes I could, and I wrote in my journal religiously (mostly mawkish poetry filled with the usual teenage angst). I didn't join the newspaper and the literary journals because I had way too much fun just living it up in New York City. But, that didn't mean that I stopped writing, or stopped dreaming of making it as a writer one day.
There was a moment my junior year when I had to decide whether to take the LSATs, the entrance examination for law school. Many of my friends were planning to go to law school, and it seemed like the law profession would be an ideal choice for me as well. I liked to do research, I could write well, and I had the grades for it. I signed up for the test-prep class and my parents sent me a check for it.
However, I remember never cashing the check. I was twenty years old, and I knew that if I started on this path --- the LSATs, the applications, law school --- I would enter a career that would never fulfill my artistic ambitions and would also be incredibly difficult to leave. My dreams of becoming a writer would fade, and I would become just another of those lawyers, with a "novel in the drawer" --- the one that never saw the light of day.
But, I didn't come from a rich family (we were rich once, but not anymore) and it was very important for me to be able to support myself financially. So, it was a very difficult decision. But I'm glad I made it, I'm glad I took the chance on myself. When I graduated, I did get a day job --- as a computer consultant, which allowed me enough headspace to do my freelance writing on the side --- and seven years after I decided not to become a lawyer, I sold my first novel.
I think you come into those forks in the road, as that Robert Frost poem says, and when you get there, you have to know yourself, your abilities, and your determination. I knew what I needed (to be able to live independently in New York), but I also knew what I wanted (to become a writer). You make your decision and you try as hard as you can to make it come true.
I don't have any regrets about my life, it's another lesson my parents taught me. Don't look back. Don't blame. Don't be wishy-washy. Make your decision and get on with it. It wasn't the easiest path --- my first novel was rejected by every publisher (it was my third written novel that became the first published one) and I went through six agents before I found the right one. The editor who bought my first novel left the publishing house in the middle of the process, and the editor who inherited it didn't "get" it in the same way. For a while there, I thought I would never sell a second book. (THE VAN ALEN LEGACY is my 16th novel).
But, I was happy. I was a writer. I was making enough to support myself in the big bad city. Everything else is gravy.
-- Melissa de la Cruz
