I have a confession – I’m a bit envious of Judge Michael Ponsor’s writing success.
Like him, I dabbled in fiction during my college years, even going so far as to send off some short stories to magazines in the hopes of publication.
Like him, I also got rejection letters.
Unlike him, I didn’t get encouragement to keep writing. And I didn’t encourage myself to keep trying, either.
Not that I haven’t made a career of writing – first as an advertising copywriter for a local department store, and for the past two decades as a reporter and feature writer for Reminder Publications – but my novelist dreams were put away long ago.
I never quite got to that point of wanting to be a full-time novelist,
as Ponsor told me he had experienced early on – and as the tale of his 20-something summer on Corsica in this month’s feature story so aptly illustrates.
Still, Ponsor’s road to the writing life is the story of a dream deferred in the early years, and then rediscovered at another point in life.
I wonder how many of us might be able to relate to some part of that. Who among us hasn’t put aside a youthful dream? How many of us, like Ponsor, have revisited them?
The well-respected judge’s later-in-life success as a novelist is an inspiration, and validation that, as he told me about my own deferred writing aspirations, “It’s never too late” to revisit a passion.
“How fortunate I feel in being able to combine the two things that
I have come to love,” Ponsor told me when we chatted. “I have enormous pride in being able to work in our system of justice.
“At the same time, being able to try to write about it and look at the actual way the system works, and look at its strengths and flaws is also a privileged and an honor,” he continued. “I enjoy trying to depict the system of justice as it really exists so people can understand it better. That way I’m combining both my love of fiction and my love of court work.”
Catch Ponsor in person, talking about his writing, at the Springfield Museums March 29 at 12:15 p.m. as part of their Museums à la Carte lectures.
Thanks for reading,
Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com
