Erin Simpson

The first thing I can remember wanting to be is a ladybug.

Even as a preschooler, I understood the logistics of this to be questionable, but I had been reliably informed by teachers and family members that I could “be anything I wanted to be,” and I had no reason to doubt that assertion. A ladybug it was.

The second thing I wanted to be was a writer.

My most vivid childhood memory is my second grade teacher pulling me aside to compliment a story I had written in class.

And, oh, the incomparable delight of realizing that something that had previously existed only in my head now existed in someone else’s and they liked it—it’s a feeling I’ve been chasing my entire life.

I filled notebooks and notebooks in elementary and junior high. Terrible stories that I would sometimes abandon halfway in frustration. But I kept coming back. Different stories, different styles, different words. Words were such uniquely beautiful things.

In high school I got serious, drafting novels compromised of hundreds of thousands of words. I met a girl in my creative writing class who also wanted to write books and we slogged through those early drafts together, trading floppy discs to evaluate each other’s work. At parent-teacher conferences my junior year, my teacher told my parents I was the best writer she had ever had.

Senior year, I got serious in a different way. I googled the statistics for writers and publishing deals. One percent. One percent of books made it to publication. I was a lot better at writing than I was at math, but I could understand that percentage was not high. I set my sights on more attainable goals and life went on.

But I still loved it. Still wanted it. Still always came back to it.

I’m not great at a lot of things, but I am good at viewing myself objectively. I am not particularly beautiful. I’m not athletic or artistically gifted. I’m a better-than-average cook. I’m smart, but not brilliant. I understand these things about myself. I’m honest.

I’m a good writer.

Objectively.

Not everyone will like my writing style, or the topic of the things I like to write about, and I understand that as well. And that’s fine, because I know I’m still good at it.

I nurtured that craft, that love, when I was young, and then for so long I shut it away in the dark, waiting for it to wither. When it didn’t, I brought it back out and considered it. Dusty, but still alive. I was older now, and my spirit was both harder and more tender, having experienced more of life. I understood better what it would take to make this thing grow.

All the hours. The working. The waiting. Things that were difficult but needed to be done.

This is why it’s so crushing to realize that it might never see daylight.

There are things in my life I love more than I love this this book. There are. My husband, my kids. I love them more.

But I have loved this longer.

And I know it will not go away. It will not give me peace.

It hurts all the worse because I nearly had it.

In 2025, I sold my book to a publisher who loved it the same way I loved it. In 2026, following the death of that publisher’s founder, they sold me—because I was the thing that was sold, not just my book—to another publisher that wasn’t of my choosing. This is common, I told myself, it’s just what’s done, and it was better than being thrown out cold and homeless, wasn’t it?

But it did not feel like a new home, it felt like a prison.

This is barely a metaphor. It is nine months into the acquisition and the publisher has not spoken to me once. They do not respond to my emails. They will not arrange a phone call. For reasons I can’t comprehend, they are pretending I do not exist. But they won’t release me, oh no. I cannot leave. I cannot drag this now-withered thing I love back into the daylight to start again. I am freed only by their mercy, of which I’ve seen little.

And I wonder now if it is too late to become a ladybug.