The Beginning
It’s the early 2000s, and I’m sitting at my desk in 2nd grade listening to my teacher tell us our assignment is to write a story.
Little did I know, this would be the start of something big. I can still remember the story I churned onto the page to this day, even though I can’t find it. It was about a pink unicorn who lost her herd and wound up in a dark enchanted forest. Luckily, fate was on her side and she found a boy purple unicorn who had lived in the enchanted forest for years, and the two fell in love. The enchanted forest became their home, and they lived happily ever after.
It was chock full of mistakes and spelling errors, short and ridiculous, and yet it was the best feeling I’d ever had. I suppose I could rightly end this post here, because the rest is history. But my readers may as well know right off the bat that I love to babble.
The Fanfiction Era
A lot of writers get their start writing fanfiction, even if none of it ever makes it to publishing. I am no exception. Behind me as I type this is my drawer of alphabetized writing: snippets of stories, character sheets, and ideas. My “trash fanfiction” folder is right there in all its glory. Pixie Hollow fanfiction bumps elbows with Twilight fanfics of the Cullens’ newest member; my own self insert. Alongside these are Divergent, Harry Potter, and even an Eragon fanfiction that is not only the height of cringe but longer than some of my current books.
But as much as I talk down to these ghosts of my former writing, they made me the writer I am today. Sometimes the key to writing is to just write. That means writing whatever you are passionate about at the time. For a lot of us, these first bits of passion come from preestablished media. I spent hours on these fanfics. They helped me hone my craft, learn how to write existing characters “in character”, as well as just getting those creative juices flowing.
While these stories will likely never see the light of day, that doesn’t mean they weren’t worth writing.
Your fanfics shape who you are as a writer, so don’t let that hold you back from pursuing your dream!
The Return of New Stories
Fanfics are all well and good, but eventually I started to get tired of them. Around 7th grade I started introducing some original stories into my repertoire (aside from my unicorn story of course).
But these stories had limits as well. I was still hitting the brick wall that is self insert characters. All of my previous fanfics had starred self insert protagonists that were usually just a “perfect” version of myself. As writing goes, this really limits you on both the quality and type of protagonist you can write. I want to discuss these types of characters and my own break free from them in detail later, but for now just know all of my stories from about 8th grade until my junior year of high school were like this.
In other words, my overall writing continued to improve but my character builds were severely lacking.
This era brought forth a book called Dreamseeker. It starred myself as a spy-in-training in a futuristic post apocalyptic world. Back in the day, all of my protagonists were either named Rebeccah, (I went through a phase as a youth where I wanted to change my name to this) Aryah, or Camaria. But I digress.
Aryah’s grandmother was teaching her to be a spy and ran an underground operation in an otherwise unassuming old fashioned farmhouse. They were attempting to take down the typical “Mr. Evil is Evil” suit wearing villain, and the protagonist eventually learns that she has the power to lucid dream and change the course of the future. Mr. Evil wants this ability for himself, and what follows is a power struggle for Aryah. Her friend Jeremy is a self proclaimed electronics expert and pilot, and Aryah is desperately in love with him.
You can probably guess the rest, but this was one of my first larger scale original stories, self insert be damned. It wasn’t a fanfic, and it didn’t use characters I liked in Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. All of these characters were my own, and Dreamseeker was the beginning of a whole slew of similar stories from me as I felt around different genres to decide what kind of writer I wanted to be.
A modern world teenager dressed in slutty clothes and falling in love with a mysterious badboy, a Victorian lady forced to wear a puffy wedding dress and who escapes her situation to find herself being hidden from her 50 year old groom by a farmhand in a barn miles away, and even a young princess finding a pirate in the woods and becoming his friend, only to have her father attempt to hang him. These were all situations my self insert found herself in.
I didn’t know it at the time, but this was me desperately searching for a genre where I felt I belonged; somewhere I felt at home to write.
I ended up spending the majority of my time writing in the High Fantasy genre. Something about wizards, elves, dragons, and castles drew me in from the start. Looking back now, I never knew that a world of my own would come to life. Sure, I would write a few stories in this genre but it wouldn’t amount to much more than that, would it?
Taking a Break
After I graduated high school, I jumped right into the factory life. 8 hours a day, sometimes 7 days a week. I wrote here and there, but I slacked off considerably from my glory days of sitting in the back of a classroom, polishing off a notebook’s worth of stories, characters, and ideas in a week.
It was during this time I entered a relationship and endured a nightmarish trauma. Writing during this time for me was a lifeline. It is something I likely will not talk about here, aside from its basic concept as context in my writing history.
After I escaped from this situation, I took a year long hiatus from writing. This is currently the longest standing break I have ever taken from my craft. It was the first time I struggled with that all too real feeling of sitting down at my computer, staring at a blank page, unable to produce a word.
I was faced with a very real, very bleak reality. My beloved hobby, my wonderful writing, my reason for living at times was ripped from my very soul. All talent, all ability, all motivation was gone. This was one of the darkest times of my existence. Writing reminded me of a very painful time in my life and I could not shake the dread when I sat down to try.
But through our most difficult times can come the most unlikely and powerful motivations to continue, to be better, and to succeed.
Factory Writer
I started forcing myself to write again. I relate this era to trying to pass a kidney stone. (at the risk of insulting any real kidney stone survivors). It was painful, uncomfortable, and incredibly unpleasant. But I knew I didn’t want to go through life without my writing, and all of that discomfort would be worth it.
As a creative person, all of my outlets are creatively based. The absence of writing was the absence of a stress free environment.
Once I got past that initial bump, I discovered an incredible amount of motivation, emotion, and overall improvement in my writing. At first I thought the reason stemmed from taking a break, but now that I have taken a step back from the situation and reflected on it, I think that the added perspective of life I received in that year is what improved my writing.
I started writing constantly. It was like I had been blessed with some fantasy power. I would stand at my machine at my factory job with a notebook. In between loading cycles I would scribble a few more words. The ideas came faster than my pen could form the letter. A new glut of book ideas and characters surged through my brain at all hours. I was high with the passion and desire to write.
This was one of the most badass times I’ve had being a writer, and I get tingles when I think about it. It made me into sort of an adrenaline junky (on a small scale) and it was amazing.
As a writer, I have always struggled with actually finishing a piece of my own. During this time, I had written nearly 3/4ths of a book in only a couple of months. It is the book I am currently working on, and the book I hope to use to break the ice of publishing for me.
A Brand New Chapter
I have since been incredibly blessed to find a man I would eventually marry. During our relationship, things became tumultuous at my factory job and I found myself faced with a difficult decision.
Sometimes in life, a leap of faith is what’s needed in a moment of strife. I took that leap with confidence and quit my job to pursue my dream of becoming an author. With a computer, the unwavering belief of my support system, and hundreds of notebooks full of my future, I will become an author.
So, this is me. A woman with a fantastical dream and the passion to improve her craft. I am actively engaging in worldbuilding, writing, recording new ideas, writing this blog, and analyzing the media I read and watch to improve myself even more.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart if you’ve made it this far, whether this is your final trip here or whether this is the start of a beautiful friendship. It has been incredibly humbling to receive the amount of support I have and the wave of people who want to read my books.
If you’d like, stick around and check out another one of my posts! Above all, I hope you enjoy your time here, and have a fantastical day!
Writing My World 