No More Tomorrows
by Edie Kenyon Jordan

"Someday," I told my mother when I was ten, "I will have an entire room full of books, and some of them will be the ones I have written!" 

Bold statement.  Forty years have intervened. The room full of books has materialized, and yet my name is not on one of them. 

I have written poems, articles, edited dissertations and theses, molded young writers and editors, graded thousands of essays and research papers, lectured on good writing techniques, preached against the sin of using snuck instead of sneaked, vented anger over the blatant misuse of the apostrophe, bemoaned the frequent dropping of the ly off adverbs, read notes from former students/now writers and editors saying, "You taught me all I know!"

I realize, however, I have been all talk and no action. I have yet to write my own book. I think of the line from Hamlet.  "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps on...." No more tomorrows for me. I sit down at the keyboard and tap out the first line of my novel.

There! The deed is done. No turning back. All it takes is the doing. Isn't that what I have always told my students? I will fill that spot on the bookshelf, Mom.