I am Jennifer Walters. I’m a social worker by day and author by night. I am a mother of two teen girls and I’ve been married for almost 14 years to my amazing husband, Owen. We live in the land of 10,000 frozen lakes and the weather that can get as cold as 60 below without windchill (fahrenheit) and as warm as 114 degrees fahrenheit in the summer.
I’ve been outside with wet hair that literally froze and broke off. I’ve been running where my eyelashes have icicles. I know what you are thinking how can someone live there. Just like in hot weather you go from air conditioning to air conditioning, we go from heat to heat. Yes there are days our cars don’t start but we jump them. Also, remote starters come in handy. I live in Minnesota because it is beautiful and there are natural lakes everywhere. We live at the lake in the summer to keep cool.
MY WRITING JOURNEY
I began writing in first grade and got my first type writer in 3rd grade–yes I’m that old! I would type away for hours and there was no way to erase my mistakes so I’d have to white it out and then go over it again. It was a lot of stopping and going, but I didn’t care because I loved what I’d create. Growing up, I never gave up my dream of becoming a writer, even though I was told by so many mentors I’ll never make any money in it and it was more of a “hobby”. One day I decided it was my time and I decided to finally publish a manuscript. I was older and more confident in my ability. The day that I told the social media world and all the people in my small town that I was publishing a novel almost put me into a panic attack. I thought they would think I was a fraud, a phony, laugh at me. Instead they supported me, shared my post, and then they did what I expected the least, they bought my book.
I had my five minutes of fame. Everywhere I went people asked me about my book. I even began carrying my books around with me because people wanted to buy them and they wanted it now. I was humbled, shocked. I was nervous they would hate it, but it was the opposite. My confidence grew as they continued to ask when the next book was coming out.
They asked me, “Jen, how did you do it while working full-time?” I told them I just made time and put it as a priority–and drank lot of coffee and just made time to sit down in that chair. I stopped watching Netflix and instead made writing my priority. It wasn’t easy, but after a while it became second nature to me. My second book took a year to write which was a lot since my first book was done in a little over 90 days. I started a new job while writing the second book and it took up a lot more of my time and energy. I finally started to realize that I didn’t need the confirmation of others, I’m doing this because plain and simple, I love it and there is nothing else I’d rather be doing here in Minnesota 🙂
