I knew I wanted to be a writer when I won an essay contest in fifth grade. In high school, I wrote for the city newspaper. Then, after marriage, I started having children and thought I was too busy to write. I soon realized I had to find the time to create pieces because stories were within me and I longed to share them. When my twins were two, I decided I wasn’t going to wait until they grew up to write. While the toddlers took their rare naps, I wrote about what I knew.

I didn’t let my legal blindness stop me from free-lancing. It took perseverance for me to write with my limited vision. The typewriter keys would hit me in the nose while I looked close to white out and correct.

After I lost more of my sight, I obtained a computer, which had large print and a speech program. This assisted me in word processing. Still, my nose dusted the screen as I edited.

I was published by the time the twins turned five. Because it took so much effort for me to write, I wouldn’t consider submitting to publications that didn’t pay. My small income helped keep food on the table for our family of nine.

Later, I taught community education classes in writing to impart some of my insights, and to give others hope from the lessons I learned in life.

In years of writing, I received many rejections but I never gave up. Instead, I kept sending out manuscripts. The result was that I achieved success.

Lately I have been doing something different besides writing short articles. I’ve been working on books, and loving it.

Throughout my life, I have fulfilled my writing dream.

Pam Bostwick’s many articles appear in magazines, newspapers and anthologies. She is visually and hearing impaired. She enjoys her new condo and its peaceful, sunny surroundings, but misses the beach. She performs with her guitar, mentors others, and adores her seven children and seventeen grandchildren. Pam happily remarried on 7/7/07. You can email her at: pamloves7-at-comcast.net.