Do authors write only because they think they have something worth sharing…whether fiction, non-fiction, poetry or essay? If you are an author, what do you think?

This question did not occur to me until last week. I wrote and sold essays about life in the Arkansas Ozarks for a number of years simply because I was bursting with all my discoveries as a newcomer here and wanted to share the wonders of homesteading in the rural Arkansas Ozarks.

Eventually those essays and much more made their way into a non-fiction book about one couple’s transition from career-oriented city life to homesteading in a self-built Ozarks cabin on 23 acres, That book, “DEAR EARTH: a Love Letter from Spring Hollow,” sold to a New York publisher and was released in 1995.

(It occurs to me that the rest of this blog may give advice for some beginning novelists. Location can be very important.)

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Okay, so far, probably not much ego involved. But then I thought of possibilities for continuing life as a writer–after all, I now had no specific job or career to take up my time. I decided to try my hand, so to speak, at writing a mystery novel. But my heart and my ideas were still firmly stuck in a love for anything to do with the Arkansas Ozarks. “A Valley to Die For” was the book that resulted after a year’s work. “Valley” is a traditional mystery novel set almost entirely in the rural area and home where I then lived. Only the people had changed. They were fiction, the plot and crime were fiction, but easily possible in the Ozarks. The book almost wrote itself and after it, and a promised second book in a potential series, sold to a fiction publisher, I was on my way. Mystery writing? I could do it! I hired a publicist I had met at a conference for writers, and began planning more novels.

Eventually my Ozarks mystery series turned into eight novels, all set in real Ozarks locations where fictitious crimes happened and my reader-popular characters lived and moved and discovered who did what and why. Eventually, in response partly to requests from readers, I created an anthology of short stories with the same characters . They continued their crime-solving work in real area locations. “Solving Peculiar Crimes” was released in December, 2021 in large print–answering another request from readers, many of whom wanted to buy my books for older relatives. Part of the appeal, I now realize, came from the fact that my stories were not violent and did not contain sex scenes or swearing, another plus for many. Several novel locations also had available gift shops where they stocked and sold “their” book.

There’s more. The main female character prays (“there are no atheists in a fox hole?”), and, though not specifically “preachy” all books did have soft religious undertones. That also made them popular to many in my area.

During the night not long ago I decided my fiction- writing career had developed well because of the above-mentioned characteristics. For probably several minutes I felt right proud of myself. Look what I had accomplished.

But then–then, ego collapsed. I had learned from mentors, advisors, conference speakers, and a skilled publicist. Yes, I had always been able to write, English classes from the sixth grade on told me that. But, really, where had Carrie McCrite, Henry King, Shirley Booth, and the others come from?

Wasn’t it possible the very thing that was apparent in my novels, those soft religious undertones., meant my writing had been God-directed?, Wasn’t I simply a “scribe under orders?”

I have a lot to think about. Do you?