It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly a decade since I graduated with the inaugural class (2015) of the MFA program in Creative Nonfiction at University of King’s College, and nearly as long since I re-launched my website with a blog called “Start Now.” That title referred to something a friend told me once when I was feeling down and I wished I could start over. She said, “You can’t start over, but you can start now.”

When I started this blog, my goal was to write about people who’d started new careers in midlife, like Claire Sower and Guenther Krueger, the way I started a master’s degree in my late fifties. And if I happened to write a few posts (like this one) on the topic of my book (a concussion I experienced in 2003 that left me with daily headaches I suffer to this day), so much the better. 

All my writing stalled in 2016, about a year after I separated from my husband of 30 years and suffered some mental health issues, and that stall continued for several years. I finally finished my book in 2023, a decade after starting the MFA program. (Read excerpts from my unpublished manuscript here.) I’ve had a couple of publishers say great things about it; the problem, they say, is marketing. 

Marketing was why I started this blog, along with a Facebook page devoted to concussion research, as well as accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Then life happened. Over and above the separation, Twitter turned into X and I no longer use it. My Facebook account was hacked, and I had to start a new one.  I simply neglected LinkedIn and Pinterest. And I haven’t posted to my blog since 2016.

So here I am, starting now—again. And the best way I can think to do that is to write about all the other people who have gone back to school, most of them like me in their forties and fifties, to tackle a book project—in most cases, their first. 

In the time since I did the master’s program, some 50 people have published the books they started while doing their MFA at King’s. I’ve read nearly two dozen of them. They are unfailingly good. Some have made it to the bestseller list. Several have won awards. I’m still looking for a publisher for my book, considering whether to self-publish. But whether it’s ever published or not, I’m proud to be among the writers who completed this program.

First up: Pauline Dakin, author of Run, Hide, Repeat.