My writing career began with a copybook, the kind with a black marbleized cover. I was six years old and wrote several jokes in it. No one laughed and I sullenly stashed that book in my bottom drawer. (Rule one: never throw any of your writings away).

Over the years, after dinner, I would see my father reading magazines about the craft of writing. As a teenager, it caught my eye and tugged at me to try again, only this time not with a copybook, but with typewritten pages properly formatted (Rule two: format your work), and with lists of magazines that might accept my story. Rejections, all three of them, trickled in and I again relegated my work to my bottom drawer. But this should be rule number three: Dream first, but then make that dream your goal. I had that dream, but I didn’t make it a goal.

Years later I wrote a letter to a local newspaper regarding something I felt passionate about. Out of two hundred letters printed that month, mine was chosen as the second best letter submitted. That was the catalyst I needed to pursue writing as a career. I now realized that my dreams were to be my goals. First I wanted to see an article of mine in the newspaper. It happened. Then I wanted to see my name in print in a magazine. I did. And over the past three years, with a lot of hard work, articles and short stories were published and I was getting paid!

My next goal was to write a book-length manuscript and be accepted by a traditional publisher. Three hundred pages later, and after many queries and anxious moments (read “months”), my first work, Lost And Found Love, was accepted and published by Koenisha Publishers in July, 2003. Of course my goals don’t stop there, and I still have that old copybook from my childhood to remind me to never give up the dream, and make those dreams my goal.

Anne Skalitza is a freelance writer whose work spans stories of romance, horror stories, and religious essays. Her first book, Lost And Found Love, is published by Koenisha Publishers and can be ordered from https://www.koenisha.com/Lost%20and%20Found%20Love.htm . Anne’ s home office is ideal: When the windows are open, she can hear the Atlantic Ocean, which is only three blocks away.