I dare you to read Chris Lynch’s Moment and not get chills. Go on–I dare you. What Chris says is just so true. And yet I never would’ve thought of it myself, at least not in these words. And if that, plus the meaty facts in Chris’ bio–hint: mountains are summited–weren’t enough, here’s a link to an amazing book trailer.  This one’s like watching a super, super short movie–it needs a new Oscar category. Thank you, as always, dear blog readers for coming by. Here’s to all of our linked Moments, every day.

I wrote for twenty years before I really discovered writing. By that, I mean that I was so focused on “making it” by getting a sale and being published, that I left my passion for what I was writing about on the shelf. It was a huge mistake that costs me two decades of work.

It was only after I realized that I needed to write about what I was truly interested in, that I finally made that first sale. And then, it was another sale, and then another one. A year later, I had racked up five sales, all because I finally understood that selling was not what I should be focused on – loving what I wrote was.

Along the way, there were many firsts that could be considered an easy fit in the “Made it Moment” category. But I felt then, as I still do today, that writing is a journey that never really ends. The best book a writer ever wrote is the one that they are going to write.

But there were some high points along the way, such as:

• My first “By” line. To see one’s name in print for the first time is definitely a rush.
• The first check or royalty payment. Now we’re talking validation! You mean I even get paid for this?
• The first time I held my novel in my hand. Yep, that was very special.
• Praise from a peer, author Kathy Bennet. She was crazy busy trying to get ready for two writer’s conferences as well as her own daughter’s wedding. She told me that she should have never picked up my novel, because when she did, she was hooked from the first three sentences, and could not put it down until she was finished.

While these were all obviously memorable moments, one really stands out. A woman that I met at a party had heard that I published my first novel. She asked me if there was any way I could talk to her son, an aspiring writer. I said that I would, and she called him up and he raced over to the party.

We sat talking for close to an hour, with me telling him about my journey and how a person needed to love writing in order to really be a writer. He hung on every word, and at the end of the day thanked me profusely, pumping my hand. That was when I realized that if I could help someone else achieve his or her own “Made it Moment,” then I had actually made it myself.

Christopher Lynch is a Southern California native and a freelance writer living in Los Angeles. Besides fiction, he enjoys writing on a variety of subjects and has written screenplays, magazine and newspaper articles, a Mystery Dinner Play, and will soon publish a children’s picture book, “Wally the Water Drop in: I am also a Cloud and a Snowflake.”

He is also an avid cyclist and a mountain climber with successful summits of Mount Whitney, Mount Shasta, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, Mount Kalapatar in Nepal, and has recently completed a trek to Mount Everest Base Camp.