It was a balmy June evening in Savannah, the kind where the air clings to your skin like honey and the cicadas provide the kind of ambiance you won’t find on any curated Spotify playlist. I was twenty-three, sipping sweet tea poured from my mother’s heirloom pitcher, when the email came through. A regional magazine—a glossy little number tucked neatly into the card racks of every Southern bed-and-breakfast worth its buttermilk biscuits—had accepted my first-ever travel essay. For three entire seconds, I forgot how to breathe. My words, my stories, were about to escape the tangle of my hard drive and walk out into the world dressed in Helvetica—a proper debutante.

But before we uncork the champagne (or something sparkling and Southern-appropriate, like peach Bellinis), let me rewind the clock. The story that led to my first byline is as much about anxiety, self-doubt, and writerly obsession as it is about victory.

Scene One: The Idea Was Born in Heartbreak

I wrote the original draft of that debut essay on a soft-lit evening after a breakup so sticky with drama it could have been a Tennessee Williams play. I’d packed up the relics of that romance—a cuff link he’d accidentally left behind, a stack of postcards neither of us ever got around to sending—and hit the road for the lowcountry marshes. Driving there felt like shedding an ancient skin. Palmettos grew thicker toward the coastline, and the horizon stretched wider with every mile.

Inspired by the blurred lines between grief and discovery, I started writing—first in a dollar-store notebook I’d tucked into my beach bag and later on a beat-up laptop that, frankly, sounded like it was one click away from exploding. I wrote and wrote, trying to capture one central truth: that endings, while undeniably painful, often crack us open in the most beautiful and unexpected ways. It wasn’t just my breakup I was writing through—it was every fractured dream I’d gingerly packed away.

The resulting essay was called “Seafoam Secrets,” an impossibly sentimental title delivered with all the earnest conviction of someone who hadn’t yet learned the powers of brevity and wit. It was a meandering piece about letting the coastline—and life—reshape you, in the same way tides smooth jagged shells into treasures.

Scene Two: (Sort of) Rejection Letters

I’d like to say that essay got picked up on my first pitch—but life rarely mirrors the hopeful crescendos of Hallmark movies. The first editor I emailed sent back a polite rejection, the editorial equivalent of “it’s not you, it’s me.” The second provided no reply at all (a classic ghosting move, though I certainly can’t throw stones… or texts).

It was humbling, to say the least. I started to wonder if the Southern aphorisms I’d woven into my writing—wisdom gleaned from my grandmother’s garden and the poetic murmur of Savannah’s Spanish-moss canopies—were just a little too quaint for the modern reader. Did anyone still have the patience for slow, deliberate descriptions of coastal breezes? Were my metaphors long-winded rather than poignant?

Then, in a moment of desperation and a smidge of recklessness, I rewrote the pitch one last time. I added some favorite lines from the essay itself, certain that if they read at least one paragraph, they’d feel the ache I felt while writing it. I even threw in a comically dramatic subject line: “Heartbreak, the Lowcountry, and One Transformational Road Trip.” (I’d later realize this veered dangerously close to clickbait territory—but hey, it worked.)

Scene Three: The Byline

They said yes.

The editor—who, in my sheer joy, I started calling my fairy godmother of print—said my story was poignant and fresh. Fresh! The word practically jumped off the screen, validating weeks of work, twenty-something doubts, and at least one minor meltdown involving a jammed printer.

Seeing my first byline in print was surreal. I bought six copies of that issue (one for each of my parents, one for my overly supportive roommate in Athens, and three just for me). My name. Sandwiched between an article about Charleston’s culinary festivals and a weekend guide to kayaking the Intracoastal Waterway. It was there, in glossy permanence, proof that I hadn’t merely daydreamed my way into imagining this milestone.

What It Taught Me

Though my essay ended up in a travel column, the truth is that piece had far less to do with literal travel than the emotional kind. It was about how we navigate jagged endings and find new paths, how life’s heartbreaks leave echoes—but also space for new beginnings.

Years later, whenever I sit down to write, I often think back to what that essay taught me:

  • Your story matters. No matter how niche or personal it feels, someone out there has probably felt exactly the way you have. Your job isn’t to make it universal—it’s to make it honest.
  • Pitch imperfectly. Waiting for your work to feel perfect will only mean waiting forever. Sometimes you just have to send the damn email.
  • Rejection is fertilizer. Is this metaphor a little earthy? Perhaps. But every polite no (or frustrating silence) cools your ego just enough to rethink, revise, and grow.

Spilling into Dating (Because Honestly, Isn’t Everything?)

Oddly enough, getting that first byline feels a bit like dating:
- You choose your strongest “picture” (in this case, your story idea).
- You craft a “profile” (your pitch) designed to grab someone’s attention.
- You put yourself out there, fully aware you might get ghosted—or worse, rejected outright.

And when you finally get the outcome you want? That “this is really happening” glow rivals even the best first date. I might have dressed my essay in Southern Gothic prose rather than a little black dress, but the thrill of being wanted—even just by an editor—was unforgettable.

Final Thoughts

These days, my bylines feel more routine—but that first one? That’s the one I’ll tell my children about one day while we sip sweet tea, overlooking the same Savannah marshes that inspired it. Every writer has a first. Every connection—a story, a romance—begins somewhere. And while we can’t predict exactly where those moments will lead, the leap of saying “Here I am, flaws and all” is one worth making again and again.

So, sincerely, from one writer to another—or one hopeful human to another: pitch yourself into the world, heartbreak be damned.