Writer’s Regrets: I Have a Few!

Larada Horner-Miller

2 years ago

As a writer, I have regrets but just a few! Since 2014, I’ve self-published seven books and three cookbooks and recorded two audiobooks—sounds prolific! In a friendly conversation this week with a friend and my husband, we talked about our regrets. I listed a couple of life regrets but not writer’s regrets. Here’s my writer’s regrets.

Let Me Tell You a Story Regret

During the spring of 1987, I had visited my parents in southeastern Colorado. As usual, we went out to our family ranch and revisited many favorite spots. The Phillie Place always topped my list as my favorite, a homestead belonging to Philadelphia Cardenas.

Charlie Garlutzo was working for the County Sheriff Department. Bob Gleason had “Phillie” (Philadelphio Cardenas) up on cow theft. Charlie got the one hundred and twenty acres bought from Phillie for seventeen dollars and fifty cents an acre while he was scared him about the charges. Garlutzo had the choice of selling the land to either Horner or Doherty. He chose to sell it to Horner.

Phillie was sentenced for a one-year term but got out in seven months for good behavior. Had Garlutzo not got the land bought from Phillie when he was scared, he would have been right back out there, back in business.

Larada Horner-Miller, Let Me Tell You a Story, (Horner Publishing Company, 2016), 17-18.

When visiting my favorite spot that time with the folks, I found a blue marble at the front door, between the door jam and a rock out front.

I asked Dad, ”Who do you think it belonged to?”

“Probably someone out fossil-hunting and rummaging through this homestead.”

That answer didn’t satisfy me. I stashed that marble in my pocket, and the question whirled around in my head the rest of our visit. When I returned home to Denver, Colorado, creative juices flowed and I wrote, When Will Papa Get Home? feverishly, staying up late into the night, writing on my 2-E computer in my two-piece bathing suit after visiting the swimming pool at my mobile home park. I completed it in a couple days, but it went in a file deep inside my computer to be forgotten until 2015, publishing it November 26, 2015! Twenty-eight years later! My busy life took over, and I forgot about this story.

When I took it up in 2015 to revise, I researched the setting and the timeline, and it became a much more solid story.

This Tumbleweed Landed Regret

In June 1992, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I participated in the Rio Grande Writing Project, a national professional development workshop for teachers. Teachers from all concentrations took part—math, science, social studies and yes language arts and literature! Being a language arts/literature teacher, it was a natural fit for me.

For one writing exercise, the instructor shared a children’s book and told us we could use children’s books in our classrooms as inspiration for students to write. She had a tub full of books and asked us to select one to read and then base a writing on it.

I selected Cynthia Rylant’s Waiting to Waltz, A Childhood—I love to dance so the title attracted me. Cynthia wrote poetry about Beaver Creek, familiar grown-ups and kids she knew. Her short, sweet vignettes in poetry form about where she grew up and the people there excited me. I could do that, and I did.

Again, I went home and the poems flowed about my hometown of Branson, Colorado, the lively characters I grew up with and the different places in Branson and on our ranch that had touched me so.

At first, sometime in 1993, I felt more positive that it could be published by a traditional publishing company, so I sent a query letter to one of the big five publishers. I received a request for a manuscript—Wow! Every author’s dream. I sent it off and received a rejection note which devastated me. Then it went in a file deep inside my computer to be forgotten, again!

On July 12, 2014, I published this manuscript, This Tumbleweed Landed, my first self-published book. It took me twenty years to publish it. Because of a workshop I’d taken in Santa Fe, New Mexico in December 2013, I added a few essays about ranch life to the book. I felt this suggestion enriched the manuscript and became the prototype I used for three of my other books. So, in this case, I feel the delay helped the end product!

Finally, and sadly, yes, I’ve had regrets as a writer, but only a few. If I had gotten a book published thirty-some years ago, I can’t imagine how different my life would have been—“shoulda, coulda, woulda!”

In the end, the long delays improved each manuscript and had its purpose. I can see that now!