Birth of a Writer

Today, I’m welcoming a second voice to the blog. In keeping with the family nature of this blog, our new contributor is… family! Sandy Clark Boone is my mom. Here’s her story of how she went from “Mom! Mom! Mom!” to award-winning photojournalist. –JAB

Sitting here, today, I have no trouble thinking of myself as an intelligent, non-psychotic human. That was not true when I was a young stay-at-home mother of three. You can only hear “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!!” so many times before you doubt yourself. I turned to the one talent I felt I had that I could develop – writing.

 I knew very little about professional writing, so I went to a writer’s conference. One of their questions was, “Have you been published?” I put down, “No, but I did win $2,000 first prize for an essay I wrote.” They laughed at me. And gave me an award for something what I entered in their contest.

But I still wanted to be published. So I listened to what they said about how to approach editors to be, you know, published. And, eventually, I was published. Then, I was published, again. It wasn’t magic, it was hard work. I had to learn to write query letters and how to find ideas and match them to a magazine. A vague goal has strange outcome. I wrote on a variety of subjects including Yankee Walters fire trucks, sewing, trolley cars, utilities, government programs, a new college, and dog trading. I even published a few poems.   

Mothers must be goal setters. If they weren’t there would only be supper on the table three nights a week. So it was with writing. First goal was to be published. Next goal was to add photography to articles. I had to buy a camera and learn SLR, F-stop, and framing.

Photography can need people. So I used my in-residence models—my three children. Need a child on a train? Sit here. Look out the window. Smile, but not too big. Got it! The children knew that going on a shoot meant keeping track of the diaper bag and being the world’s most well-behaved children. And in one of life’s near miracles, they were. I knew just how much I was depending on them when my seventeen-month-old set up a shot and waved her fingers when she had it where it was right.

Eventually, I made of goal of publishing pictures of all three children in articles. They had earned that. And, eventually, I did it.

 And hearing “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy” constantly didn’t seem so bad, anymore. Because I knew that mommy was also Sandy and Mommy Sandy could set a personal goal and receive back the love and encouragement of her family. And there is nothing psychotic about that.