Crumpling the notebook pages in my hand, I quietly walked out of the farmhouse. I felt wounded, but I wasn’t crying.  Earlier that morning, I had shown my mother a story I had written. Mom disapproved of something she read and scolded me. The pain I felt was a deep, aching shame. Knowing what I needed to do, I crossed the farmyard towards the orchard.

Our freshly planted garden ran alongside the rows of trees. After tearing the notebook pages into small scraps, the size of snowflakes, I dug a hole in the soft soil near my favorite crabapple tree. Scooping up the white bits of paper, I threw them into the hole and covered them with the rich, dark brown soil.

At ten years of age, I didn’t know a single person who wrote anything other than letters to friends or relatives.  Yet, I wanted to write a book someday. Who knows where I’d gotten an idea like that. The teachers at my grade school certainly hadn’t covered anything like the different types of writing a person could do, nor how to construct stories that had realistic conflict, climax and satisfying resolutions.

The desire to write never left me. Every several years I’d pull out my notepad and do some writing. The people who saw these first literary attempts gave me honest critiques. Being thin-skinned, their advice on how to improve felt like personal attacks. The result each time was the same. I’d throw my notebook back into the desk and try to forget about it.

On an afternoon in 1989, I went for a walk after work. As the stress of the day fell away from me, I started to relax and enjoyed reflecting on my life. When I arrived back home, I thought to myself, “I want to share my thoughts. I need to write them down!”

Either my skin grew thicker or my need to write became so strong that I finally was able to swallow my pride and accept the constructive advice I was given. I was told to show how things happened instead of telling the reader what happened. I was also told to narrow my topic down to one experience and guide the readers to see, hear, feel and smell everything I did. I discovered that writing isn’t just about knowing how to spell, arrange topics and when to start new paragraphs. Trying to remember all those things sometimes makes me feel a bit like I’m trying to rub my head and pat my belly at the same time.

One June summer afternoon in 1990, I was getting ready to leave for Marshfield to run errands when my husband, Arnie came home from work. Sitting down at his desk to do paperwork, he commented, “I heard that the Buyers Guide is looking for writers.”

Impulsively, I turned back into the dining room to pick up one of my recent manuscripts, saying, “I’ll apply.”

Later, in Marshfield, I stopped at the Buyers Guide office to place my manuscript on their desk. I said, “This is a sample of my writing.” The nerve of what I was doing finally dawned me, so I finished in a rush, “I’ve never written for any one and I don’t know if I can.” Feeling embarrassed, I slunk out of the office, relieved that they didn’t know me, and I’d never have to face them again.

To my great surprise, two days later I received a call from the Buyers Guide. I was told, “We like the way you write. We want you to do a weekly column for us. Please give us a picture of yourself, a name for your column and an introductory article by next Wednesday.”

In shock, I called my mother and said, “Mom, I’m going to write a weekly column for the Buyers Guide.”

After a moment of silence, my mother asked, “Is the Buyers Guide the paper we leave in the box until it gets wet and then throw it out?”

At work, I asked a nurse, “Should I name my column, Guide Lines, because it’ll be in the Buyers Guide?”

Terri answered, “No, people will think you’re giving advice. Name your column, Life Lines, because it’ll be about life.”

Twenty-five years after starting to write my column for the Buyers Guide, in September of 2015, someone in their office emailed me that they would no longer pay me for my articles. Never missing a beat, I began posting my weekly articles on my blog site at lifelinesbykathy.com

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been writing for 33 years, never missing a week despite all the wear and tear of my life. That comes out to well over 33,800 words a year, and 1,716 articles since June of 1990!

When I was ten years old, I buried ripped up notebook pages in the family garden. I don’t remember what I had written about in them, or why Mom didn’t like it. Over the years I have come to realize that seeds are not buried, they are planted. As a ten-year-old, I planted my desire to write. It took a long time for those scraps of paper to germinate, but they did finally grow.