The Bakersfield Voice

larger view

When I retired in 1994, I was a little worried about being bored during the week. I’d been working for most of my life, having only weekends off, now I would have 7 days a week off.
I knew I needed to find something to fill my time. I certainly couldn’t read all day, and I didn’t want to watch the Soaps on daytime TV. I figured this would be a real challenge.
I’d always wanted to write the Great American Novel. Something like Gone With The Wind, or maybe one of those romance novels that have pretty much the same plot, but with a different hero. Now I had time.
My daughter and her family had just moved to Bakersfield from Burney and were staying with me while they found a house. Now I knew nothing about computers, but I could type and had an old portable Remington. I did have enough sense to know using a computer would be a lot faster and easier than trying to type each page. So I took my grandsons who were ten and twelve with me and we went shopping for a computer. We found one on sale at Montgomery Wards that would fit my needs. I purchased it, and we took it home. Josh, the oldest, set it up and showed me how it worked. I might add it certainly intimidated me, but once I got going it was really fun. I even took a couple of classes at the Adult School on Mt. Vernon. That’s where I learned not to be afraid of hitting the wrong button and you can usually correct anything you do that isn’t what you intended.
After that, I was writing so much I certainly didn’t have time to be bored. I would start early in the morning and first thing I knew it was lunch time.
Then I found an article about this writers club that was having a meeting, so I went to check it out. I joined the Writers of Kern in 1996 and learned so much at their meetings and workshops and am now a published author of five Children’s books and have a column in the Northwest Voice and the Southwest Voice.
After only 3 months in the club I got conned into being the Secretary and then when the publicity chairman quit I took that over until they could find someone. Needless to say, that was 5 years later. I was busy, but I loved every minute of it and I wasn’t bored. Retirement was wonderful
As I was learning the computer I wrote some short essays, poetry, tried a bit of romance writing, but always came back to writing for children. I guess that was my calling. I joined a critique group for children’s writers and boy did they help me. I wrote over 70 short essays, probably 40 poems, and after writing about 30 short stories for kids I decided to put them into a book. Thus Grannies’ Shorts was born and the sequel, Grannies’ Critters. I have many unpublished works, but I’ve also published some, but the best thing of all is I’ve had a very fulfilling retirement. I didn’t write the next great American Novel, but I’ve had a ball writing for children. When you retire, you just have to look for something that interests you and retirement will be the best time of your life.