I met Mrs. Neidl in the ninth grade on a stage­design team for a play and she was one of the directors. Almost instantly I loved her. She had an unpleasant voice and a direct way of speaking，_________ she was encouraging and inspiring. For some reason, she was impressed with my work and Mrs. Neidl would ask me for my _________. She wanted to know how I thought we should _________ things. At first I had no idea how to answer because I knew _________ about stage design! But I slowly began to respond to her _________. It was cause and effect; She believed I had opinions, so I began to form them. She trusted me to complete things, so I completed them perfectly. She loved how _________ I was, so I began to show up to paint more and more. She believed in me, so I began to believe in myself.

Mrs. Neidl’s _________ that year was, “Try it. We can always paint over it later！” I began to take risks. I had been so afraid of failing but suddenly there was no failing — only things to be _________ upon. I leaned to dip my brush into the paint and _________ create something.

The shy, quiet freshman achieved success that year. I was __________ in the program as “Student Art Assistant” because of the time and effort I’d put in. It was that year that I __________ I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing stage design.

Being on that stage­design __________ with Mrs.Neidl changed me completely. Not only was I stronger and more competent than I had thought, but I also __________ a strong interest and a world I hadn’t known existed. She taught me not to care what people think I should do. She taught me to take chances and not be __________. Mrs. Neidl was my comforter when I was upset. Her trust in me has inspired me to do things that I never imagined __________.

In 2019, I was staying at a fitness camp in Thailand. After doing 2.5 hours of kickboxing, I began to cough. Thinking it was probably from the intense workout, I brushed off the _________.

But over the next few hours, I started struggling to_________breathe and my heart began to _________. I panicked and decided to get help. As I was _________myself to the front desk, a Thai woman saw me and asked what was wrong. I tried to _________that I couldn’t breathe.

The woman was so _________. She was on the phone within 10 seconds, _________a car to get me to a hospital. Another Thai woman came and talked to me for a few minutes, _________me I would be okay at the hospital. Ten minutes later, the car came._________, I was taken to a doctor’s office. The nurse couldn’t speak English but __________me the whole time she examined me. Then she __________“bronchitis” (支气管炎) on her phone and gave me some medications.

When I got back to the __________, many people asked me if I was okay. They checked in on me multiple times a day and brought me food. Over the next week, I __________.

It is hard to describe the __________that I felt at the time, as well as the relief and thankfulness I felt being surrounded by so many __________strangers who took care of me. I don’t know what would have happened without them.

I’m a late boomer as a writer. I’ve been writing for children for 30 years, and I sold my first _______ in 2011.

It wasn’t until I started teaching first grade in Los Angeles that I was _______ by the poetry and simple beauty of picture books. From then on, I began having the _______ that I could write riddles, poems and stories for children to _______ in the classroom.

One day, a fellow teacher pulled me aside on the playground. “Dianne, you are so _______ , so you should produce something new, not just for teaching in classrooms,” she said. I felt _______ after hearing her opinion. How could I really write well? Could I _______ a career as a word artist? But finally I _______ my job in the Los Angeles school system and moved to Southampton, wishing to write better picture books.

I studied, read, wrote and submitted. Though I received payment on some _______ , I still couldn’t earn enough money to ________ all my expenses. So I opened a small cleaning service, ________ after wealthy New York City weekenders, and I did all of the work myself. ________ , I still had time to write after work. Thirty years seemed long, but I’d kept my ________ alive. Finally, twenty complimentary copies of my first story, Hush Little Beachcomber, illustrated by Holly McGee, arrived at my door at the end of February in 2011. What a complete ________ it was on that freezing winter afternoon!

This is the main thing I want to tell you: Never give up. After all, you never know when you will make your ________ .