When I was 6, I wrote my first short story: Attack of the Killer Pears and Cottage Cheese. I gave it to my mom who told me it was great. (Don't you just love Mom's?)
When I was 13 I sat down to pen my first novel, imagining the interviews I'd be offered when I got published and the public realized how young I was. I was so focused on the fame, I only got to the second paragraph before I realized I had no idea what I wanted to write about. I gave up.
When I was 17 I wrote for my school newspaper and for my required writing portfolio. I wrote a poem about taking a Greyhound bus from Kentucky to Idaho. It floored my teacher. She made me read it out loud to all of her other classes.
When I was 25 I had a dream. About two sisters and their father, and a catastrophe.
That's when I realized I had to write. Not just for my mom, certainly not for fame, and not because someone else told me to. I had to write for myself.
So I did. I sat down at my computer and let this world come to life in front of me. I knew my characters, I knew my conflict, I knew what had to happen. What I didn't know, or realize at the time, was how much I would love the process. Things started happening in the plot that I hadn't planned on. Characters popped up that were presumably hiding between the lines. I was taken on a journey that was unlike any experience I'd ever had in my life. Skip forward a year and a half (including the birth of my daughter and purchasing our first home) and I have a Young Adult Fantasy Novel complete at 133,000 words that I'm sending it out to every literary agent I can, hoping that I'll be able to continue on this journey as I have at least two more books in me with these characters.
And now I'm a member of an Writer's League and meeting authors and doing things I never dreamt I'd really be able to do. And I have a LONG road in front of me. But that's what makes it so exciting!
