I Hope You Don't Mind That I Put Down in Words . . . Lots of Things

In case those who read this haven't figured it out by now, I really like to write. I have ever since I was a little girl, composing four-page stories from the age of nine. It was the pride of my life to read my stories to my fourth-grade class and hear my fellow students tell me that my stories were really good. I continued the story-writing up until I was about fourteen. I stopped when I realized that my old masterpieces really weren't all that great. One of my biggest regrets is that I threw away all but one of my school-girl stories in a moment of teenage stupidity, and now their plots are distant memories. They had really gripping titles, too. "Snow Camp", "Daddy's Home", and "Basketball Wars", just to name a few. But I still really enjoyed writing, even after I gave up writing stories regularly. I took a Creative Writing class my senior year in high school, and I was so proud of myself when I managed to create a sonnet in iambic pentameter within twenty minutes. Shocking. And a long way from my first thrilling epic ever written, "The King and Queen Are Missing!" (gee, i wonder how the plot of that story went.)

I have never aspired to be a great writer, though, and I don't really think I ever will be, but I've been really surprised at the last year of my life and how much time I have spent typing away at story ideas that pop into my head at random times. Sometimes it's a dialog that I think of first, or an image of a scene that I want to describe, and suddenly I think of a whole story to go along with it. Just last week, between the states of sleep and wakefulness, a scene popped in my brain that was crying out for an explanation. Once I was fully awake, I couldn't put the scene aside. I had to create a story to it. Once I had, I shared the storyline with Esther. I'm not sure she was really all that enthralled with it considering it's my hobby and she was lying in bed, but I think she did find a couple of plot points kind of interesting.

If you're curious about the kinds of things I end up writing about, it's not really worth it to ask me for an excerpt or anything. I may be an extremely loud and obnoxious person, but I'm incredibly shy when it comes to sharing these little tidbits of stories, especially when I want to expand on them and actually write something book-length. It was a big deal when I read a mere paragraph to Becky and Esther from something I'd been working on for a couple of months (i'd written more than a paragraph after two months of working on it, but the paragraph was all i shared with them). I'll just say that one of my greatest wishes has been to write a really great American Revolution historical fiction epic. Well, maybe "epic" is too grand a word. But I have a tendency to exaggerate, in case you missed that, as well.

I don't think I have the ambition to really try and ever publish anything I write. I think I'd surprise even myself if I ever did. For now, it's still a hobby I love. But just in case I ever branch out and write something that I don't just post to a blog, you can all say you knew me when. Because, naturally, whatever I write will immediately be a big-time best-seller, complete with a feature film option, and I will be a hit celebrity, like Stephenie Meyer . . . but not like Stephenie Meyer. So far, none of my stories have centered around hormonal, teenage vampires. I have a feeling they never will.

-Me

"Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing." -Randy K. Milholland