Introducing Sam, Warrior woman

In my last entry I promised to explain why I’m called Sam. The full avatar is Samurai.

Some years ago, I belonged to Women at Work, an online forum which aims to provide support to small business owners or women who aspire to do so. One of the forum members had difficulty typing my real name because her computer kept correcting her spelling and offering Samurai as an option.

My fellow forum members decided that the name suited me, as I have the temperament of a noble warrior, and so the moniker stuck.[Samurai= a term for the military nobility in pre-industrial Japan. Source: Wikipedia].

Only, Samurai is such a mouthful, so Sam it is.

Sometimes when I face life’s challenges, including rejection from publishers, I forget that I’m supposed to be a warrior. I just want to lie down, close my eyes and wait for the world to go away.

Then I receive an email from one of my fellow-bloggers, who refer to me as Sam, and I’m not just any old writer. I’m a warrior woman too. And a warrior woman does not give up.

The basics

I’m a woman, daughter, mother, sister, aunt and friend. I work as a journalist, aspire to write books and work too hard to make the latter possible. I spend a lot of time online, talking to friends and trying to learn the business and craft of writing. I also garden, read a lot of fiction and watch some TV.

I live in an old house in Johannesburg, and every so often I think that I should be doing something to renovate it. Then I paint a room or something, decide I’m too exhausted to continue and get back to the rest of my daily activities until inspiration strikes again.


Dreams

Sometimes I wonder if being working as a writer was the right career choice for me. I would definitely be making more money, and suffering less rejection, if I worked as an accountant or lawyer. But I know that deep down I’m doing what I’m supposed to do with my work life, despite the challenges.

Of course, if I’m meant to be a professional writer, one would think I would get the combination of writing well and making a living at it right, wouldn’t one? Yet, here I am at almost 40, not yet rich, not yet famous, and still battling to break in. Note the yet - I am ever the optimist.

I think part of issue is that I [mostly] enjoy being a writer. I also keep faith that my dreams will come true, and that I will place my books with publishers, and they will be read by enough people to make the effort worthwhile. I know I’m looking for a needle in the haystack, but what would be the fun [ and challenge ] if success came too easily?