I think I've always been a writer. It's just that, for a while, I forgot. Life got hectic, work got stressful, and I fought my way through, trying to figure out where I fit in. I'd sit at my keyboard, writing resumes to send out... but I could never figure out what special skills I had. I never felt like I had anything to include in those pages that were anything out of the ordinary.
When I was younger, I loved books. I don't just mean I liked to read. My mom was on it - I mean, she was a young, single mother who was absolutely determined to make sure I had the skills to make something wonderful out of my life. If I remember correctly, we started in with the Hooked-on-Phonics before my fourth birthday. She was diligent about it, too, and she used every tool in her arsenal. Threats, bribes, didn't matter. Two hours a day, sometimes more, we'd sit there in the floor of the upstairs bedroom, and no amount of screaming could get me out of it... thinking about it now, I can still hear the pre-recorded womans voice, "A. Ahh. Put it behind. B. Buh. Put it behind..."
But I could read at four years old... and in third grade, I was the nerdy girl hiding Great Expectations in my lap during math class - trying not to get caught..
And in middle school, after meeting my then best-friend, I realized that I could create my own stories. And we did. Both of us. Every Friday after school, my mom would drop me off with twenty bucks, and Nadia and I would walk down the block to buy two notebooks, a pack of glittery gel pens, a fruit punch Snapple and a bottle of Ocean Spray White Grape. Then we'd hole up in her room (that her dad nicknamed 'The Cave') and we'd put on a CD - roughly an hour in length. We'd each start a story in our own notebook, and as soon as the CD went off, it was time to trade and edit. I miss that feeling. We were both SO excited to read each-others work, and even more excited to have ours read.
Just a few weeks ago, when I had finished every single book I'd downloaded onto my PC, I was thinking about those nights. How exciting writing had been, how there's been absolutely nothing in my life that's ever given me quite the rush of creating characters and fantasy worlds... Inspiration struck me. I decided that I was going to write a novel. It doesn't matter if no one's ever going to see it, or if nothing comes of it. I'm going to write a novel.
Well, I'm almost 7,000 words in, almost to the third chapter... but I decided that I was going to blog about it. From start to finish. Well, from the middle of chapter two on; all about the writer's block, the sudden bouts of inspiration, the parts that suck. All of it. Even if no one ever reads it. :]
