Are we born to do our jobs? Is the same DNA that chooses whether we have brown eyes or blonde hair, also responsible for choices that we make when it comes to our careers? It certainly seems like this might be the case, at least with creative people.

Ask any artist to give up drawing or painting and you might as well request he hand over a limb. Dancers are constantly tapping their toes, and their feet seem to always be in second position…even if they are forty and haven’t put on toe shoes in twenty years. So maybe today I will narrow the question: Are creative people born to create?

At first it might seem like a simple nature-nurture question. Cops grow up in cop families with cop attitudes. Engineers seem to sprout out of engineer families. It is not uncommon to see entire families of medical people. Firemen produce little fire fighters and military blood runs deep as well.

But what about creative people?

Many of us, when we tell our family that we want to be a writer, what they hear is akin to, “Blah, blah, throwing away college education blah blah cult blah Kool-Aid, blah blah writer.”

Most of my family was less than thrilled when I announced that I was leaving corporate sales to pursue my dream to write.

If you look at the picture above, that was me. Okay, well this is actually my son at eleven months old. He writes all day with anything and ON anything he can get his little hands on. He has notebook upon notebook filled with scribbles and drawings. No paper, wall or pet is safe. I was exactly the same way. I was writing novels before I had completely learned my alphabet.

My first novel was a riveting tale titled Hi Kristen Mom Love…because those were the only words I knew how to spell. It read like this:

J4yy 9 rs!

Clearly it was a tale about Princess Kristen and the evil witch who made all the little girls wear ugly boy pants. I recall using colored yarn to bind the pages and then would decorate my “book covers” with the Spirograph I got for Christmas…and then would go door to door selling Hi Kristen Mom Love to the neighbors for 5 cents a piece, only 10 cents if they bought the entire series.

So maybe I had a little sales in me too.

What I find astonishing, aside from the fact that a four-year-old sold door-to-door and no one called the police, was that I made a lot of money. Wait…no, that wasn’t my point. What I find interesting is that the same family who raved about the sheer brilliance of Hi Kristen Mom Love was the same family who later told me to be practical. I had to make a living. Writers were broke, depressed hippies who lived in their mothers’ basements…until they landed in Betty Ford or ODed.

Okay, they didn’t say that, but might as well have.

My grandfather wanted me to go into business. It didn’t matter that Kristen couldn’t add a column of numbers and get the same answer twice if her life depended on it. Dad wanted me to go in the military. He was a Navy man. Military. Yeah…I tended to ask Why? a tad too much. I spent two years in ROTC, and granted, I won more ribbons than anyone else…but I also did more push-ups and ran more laps than anyone else. Finally, one day the Commander called me into her office and asked if I might not prefer another career choice.

Not very encouraging.

I tried politics. Worked as an intern for a Congresswoman, but apparently my tolerance threshold for dealing with morons was not near high enough for working for the government. So, I figured sales! THAT was the ticket. I could seriously TALK, and salespeople were good at talking. I could do that. Except, I was absolutely the world’s worst salesperson, namely because I hated it. Hmmm. What now? Maybe law school. Hey, I had really great verbal skills. I did want to be a writer and lawyers wrote a lot of stuff, right? The one thing I didn’t count on was I’d actually be accepted.

My family was thrilled and all I could think was Crap.

I am actually really happy I was accepted to law school. It forced me to stand up for myself. I recall holding that letter in my hand. All I had to do was show up for orientation and buy my books, and I thought NO. I can’t do this anymore. I was born to WRITE. I don’t care if I am ever successful, at least I will be HAPPY.

See, I had spent a lifetime trying to please everyone else. I felt like a fish out of water, confused about what my purpose on this spinning hunk of rock really was. Yet, in reality, I had known all along since I was two and writing on the walls. I was BORN to write. It was why I had failed at everything else. Those other jobs were not my destiny.

The interesting thing is that once I made my mind up to embrace my destiny and give it all I had, I finally started seeing success. Why? I was willing to work 15 hour days and work 6 days a week because I LOVED my job. I was now excited about every new day and each new project. I was eager to learn all I could to get better. I hadn’t been this way with any other job. In sales, medicine, politics, law, I did the bare minimum to get by. It felt like walking through quicksand.

With writing? I was liberated.

The even MORE interesting thing is that my mother is a nurse. Heck everyone in her family is. My father was a radiation safety officer (explains a lot :P). My grandfather was a CFO. Thus, at first glance it seems I am the odd duck of the family. Yet, my father hated his job and spent his free time writing poems in a notebook he carried around with him. My mother has never thrived as a nurse, and, this past month, has taken up blogging. She admits she always wanted to write, but dyslexia and family disapproval stopped her.

After I had the courage to step out and become a writer, my one uncle started a sign business, because it incorporated his love for drawing and art. My other uncle, a history teacher, now acts and does competitive ballroom dancing with his girlfriend. He has taken up singing and it still weirds me out.

So was I really the black Lamb sheep after all?

What about you guys? What does your family think of you writing (drawing, painting, dancing, singing)? You think they might be closet creative people? Do you think we are born to do our creative field? Or is it an outside influence? Nature or nurture? Both? Come on! Time to play armchair scientist.

I love hearing from you! And to prove it and show my love, for the month of August, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. If you leave a comment, and link back to my blog, and mention my book We Are Not Alone in your blog…you get your name in the hat THREE times. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner every week for a critique of your first five pages. At the end of August I will pick a winner for the grand prize. A free critique from me on the first 15 pages of your novel. Good luck!

Note: I am keeping all the names for a final GRAND, GRAND PRIZE of 30 Pages (To be announced) OR a blog diagnostic. I look at your blog and give feedback to improve it. For now, I will draw weekly for 5 page edit, monthly for 15 page edit.

In the meantime, I hope you pick up copies of my best-selling books We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer . Both books are ON SALE for $4.99!!!! And both are recommended by the hottest agents and biggest authors in th biz. My methods teach you how to make building your author platform FUN. Build a platform and still have time left over to write more great books! I am here to change your approach, not your personality.

I love hearing from you! And to prove it and show my love, for the month of July, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. If you leave a comment, and link back to my blog, and mention my book We Are Not Alone in your blog…you get your name in the hat THREE times. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner every week for a critique of your first five pages. At the end of August I will pick a winner for the grand prize. A free critique from me on the first 15 pages of your novel. Good luck!

Note: I am keeping all the names for a final GRAND, GRAND PRIZE of 30 Pages (To be announced) OR a blog diagnostic. I look at your blog and give feedback to improve it. For now, I will draw weekly for 5 page edit, monthly for 15 page edit.

In the meantime, I hope you pick up copies of my best-selling books We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer . Both books are ON SALE for $4.99!!!! And both are recommended by the hottest agents and biggest authors in th biz. My methods teach you how to make building your author platform FUN. Build a platform and still have time left over to write more great books! I am here to change your approach, not your personality.

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