TEKLA ON WRITING

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Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the women I most admire, once said, "You can gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

Although it may be difficult at times, I try to live my life by these words. I have many friends who have faced daunting obstacles and seem to practice with elegance and without complaints what Eleanor Roosevelt suggested. I am rarely that graceful.

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MY WRITING LIFE

It never occurred to me that I would one-day be a published author. When I retired early my friends urged me to write about my twenty-year career with the Michigan Department of Corrections including as a warden of a men’s maximum security prison. “You should write a book. You have so many fascinating stories to tell,” they said.

But I brushed them off. After all the most exciting material I had written all those years were my monthly reports and annual budgets. Trust me, these don’t make best-seller material.

Once retired I ran the gamut of bad feelings about losing my authority as a warden. I was no longer asked to make life and death decisions. I became Ms Miller instead of Warden Miller. I worried about how to fill my days–days that were once exciting and demanding with never enough hours in them when I managed a prison. Deciding what to cook for dinner wasn’t the same as dealing with such issues as a stabbing in the yard, suicide, assaults, or a hostage situation.

The transition from a challenging work world to retirement might have been easier if I had mapped out my future. The only plan I had made, however, was when I could access my retirement money. Yet all that agonizing about what I would do with the rest of my life didn’t foretell the direction my future would take. That revelation came to me after one specific event. Tired of staring at the walls in my home, I determined to do what so many of my predecessors had done–I became a consultant. Within a month of that decision I got my first job. I was hired to be a keynote speaker at the Massachusetts Sheriffs’ Association conference on the female offender. I was flown to Boston, put up in a nice hotel, chauffeured around and paid $500 for a thirty-minute speech. I was delighted and knew I had made the correct choice. I couldn’t make that much money for a half hour of writing, especially when I didn’t have the skills. I left Boston flying high on my success and mentally preparing for the next organization to call me to assist them.

When I got home I promptly deposited my $500 check and made plans on how to spend it. Shortly after, the bank notified me that the check bounced. “How can this be?” I asked the teller. “It’s written on the Sheriffs’ Association’s account?”

I promptly called the administrative assistant to the association’s executive director. “I am so sorry,” she said. I could clearly hear her embarrassment. “I’ll send a money order.”

Little did I know that by the time I had contacted the association, the executive director was under investigation for mismanagement of funds. When I discovered this, I told myself, “Perhaps consulting isn’t meant for me. I should try writing. What did I have to lose? I couldn’t have a worse experience.”

My wise friend, Larry, an agent for scriptwriters, set me straight about my next step to a fulfilling retirement when he said, “Just because you have a story to tell doesn’t mean you can write it. And even if you can write it well, finding a publisher who agrees with you takes hard work and persistence.”

As a former warden, I could relate to the hard work and persistence. It was the writing part that had me scared. So after that conversation with Larry, I followed his other advice and took creative writing classes. But first, I bought a computer and learned how to type.

Though the decision to write opened up an exciting and dynamic world to me, I wasn’t prepared for the humiliation and rejection it also brought. As a warden, I had developed a thick skin and stubborn streak. Yet even armed with those traits, I often found myself curled into a fetal position sucking my thumb after being rejected by an editor twenty years younger than I who probably never saw the movie The Bird Man of Alcatraz.

My training as a warden did pay off because I was persistent despite the rejections. I've endured because of my new- found colleagues/friends–seasoned authors–I have met through workshops, conferences, associations and my critique group. They persuaded me to never give up. My critique group has also become my true writing teachers. Because of their encouragement I have pursued a writing career and have reaped many rewards.

However I had to be willing to take chances, make mistakes face rejections, while exercising perseverance and seizing opportunities. I also learned that money isn’t the reason I write. This is true of most writers I know. It is the joy of creating something that is thought provoking and stimulates others to action. Joy for me is found in the letters I receive from readers. One example is the letter from a former female gang member who now works with troubled youth and attributes her change to reading my first memoir The Warden Wore Pink. Another example is the letter from a teenager who was on house arrest and after meeting me and reading both my memoirs is now studying criminal justice. No money can replace these kinds of rewards for my writing.

I am thrilled to get messages from readers who tell me I’ve made them laugh or helped them to reflect on the absurdity of life. For me creating a written piece deepens and expands my life. I can only hope it touches others.
Writing gave me the freedom and confidence to expand other personal pursuits as well such as hiking in the Colorado mountains, even a “fourteener”–a peak over 14,000 feet. One summer’s day while sitting in a meadow of wildflowers blooming at 12,840 feet on the Continental Divide, I announced, “I want to celebrate my upcoming 60th birthday by snowshoeing in Yellowstone–a dream I’ve had for many years.”

Every woman with me that day shouted, “Yes. What a great idea!”

The following February eleven other women and me stayed in a yurt camp for four days and three nights and snowshoed and crossed-county skied every day with guides through the majestic national park. We always mixed humor with our excursions through the frozen meadows and woods along the Yellowstone River to the rim of the Upper and Lower Falls. We ate lunch in the warmth of bubbling mud flats and feasted on hearty breakfasts and dinners under the glow of gas lanterns in the comfort of a yurt kitchen and gathering area.

Why are these personal excursions important to writing? I believe these activities help release hidden creative juices or skills that were buried deep inside me during all those years I devoted to my career. Now I keep a journal of what I see, hear, touch and smell. Every experience inspires writing. Every experience can be woven into a story. Every experience has proven to me that there is a fulfilling life after being a warden and I can put it into the written word.

Now at sixty-four I have two memoirs, The Warden Wore Pink and A Bowl of Cherries, several non-fiction articles and stories, and a novel, Life Sentences, published. Inevitable Sentences, the sequel to Life Sentences will be released in 2009. I have completed another memoir, Mother Rabbit, which is about my sister when she was the Bunny Mother of the Chicago Playboy Club in 1966 and 1967. I hope to have my second fiction, Ten Hours in July published shortly. I never stop writing. When one project is finished, I start another, which has been rolling around in my head. In fact, I am now working the rewrite of the novel Ten Hours in July. For me the writing process is happily addictive.

At a recent party I was approached by two women who asked, “Are you Tekla Miller, the author?”
It took me a moment to ponder the question because I had only been known as “The Warden.” After a quick review of my achievements over the past ten years, I proudly answered, “Yes, I am.”

What a wonderful feeling! So although joy and freedom weren’t immediate results of my departure from corrections, these did come after many trials and errors and a great deal of soul searching. All of this forced me to embark on a new life of writing that to me is like being on a vacation. The only fear I have is that someone is going to tell me to pack up and go home.

Please read a sample from each of my books by clicking onto the title.

I look forward to hearing from you in the contact form on this site. Perhaps I’ll even be lucky enough to meet you at one of my events.