Putting it out there...

We all know the scary side of going Indy is putting your real name out there with a big bold sign that says LOOK WHAT I DID.  When we were real little most were anxious to show our artwork or newest creation to the world. We vied for attention of adults. Then getting older we were suddenly too cool to care. Shrugs, head  flips, acting out in other directions, and, for some, hiding replaced our anxiousness to share.

Stephen King never seemed to have this problem. He wrote in his book, On Writing, that he was sending stuff out to magazines even as a kid. He had a big nail in the wall over his desk and used to spike the rejection letters onto it. I find this brave stuff for someone of such a young age. 

I had good parents. We were on the poorer side of life but happy. My parents went the extra mile to talk with us and be active in our interests. When the teen years hit I was mostly a hider. I hid my stories and most of my art work but for the life of me I don't know why. Even after high school I wouldn't show my work to anyone. I got married, never shared. Had kids and made up stories just for them and let the adult stories fall by the wayside.

Then I met Leni. Our kids were in kindergarten and we'd sit outside by this big tree waiting for them to come out of class and talk. She was one of the smartest people I'd ever met. A voracious reader, Leni was the kind of person who believed we were capable of anything. Eventually, I told her about one of  my stories and her first reaction was: PUBLISH IT! I stared at her. Never in all my years of writing had I thought of publishing anything. I wrote because I couldn't not write. But Leni was a do-er. She saw something and did it. She was amazing and encouraging and I decided to write something aiming to publish.

The story was about a woman who went back in time to the days right before the Civil War. It went into how a woman from the 80's  adapted to life without all our modern conveniences and how she dealt with the climate of slavery, suppression of women's rights, etc. It was a hard write. I'm way too liberal to be able to survive that without a fight.
That story is in a box somewhere and will probably never surface again, but I have to thank Leni, my dear friend, for giving me the power to put it out there. Without her I'd still be hiding. Leni passed away from MS but her spirit has never left me. She was all that was good in the world.

My question under all this is when did you decide to put it out there? How did you find the courage?