Eleven Years

I've been thinking a lot about how I've changed as a writer recently and I somehow got it into my head that maybe some of you would enjoy reading about how it all started, at least for me. If not, I'm not at all offended. Return to Facebook and enjoy cat videos. Or puppy videos. Hedgehogs. Donkeys. Whatever your heart desires.

When I was in fourth grade, my mom enrolled me in a week long summer writing camp at The Cabin in Boise. For a week, from 9:00-12:00, I hung out with a group of kids my age and wandered downtown Boise doing various writing assignments for our instructors. Nothing huge because even late elementary school kids can't write a whole lot. At the end of the week, we had to read one of our pieces for the other groups and for our parents. I read a poem about the river which my mom still has in a frame at our house. 

That was the beginning. Well, okay, not exactly.

I have no memory of this but my parents have told me that when I was young, two or three, I would have them play with me and my set of Winnie the Pooh figurines. But I would tell them what to say and, according to my mom, I always had a little story worked out. Go three year old me! Woo!

I was in fifth grade when I made my first attempt at prose writing (if we can even call it that). I wrote really bad diaries because I was obsessed with the Dear America and Royal Diaries series. Yes, they were all bad and no, nothing could be salvaged from them. Believe me- I've transferred them from every laptop I've owned. More on that later.

So I basically hijacked my mom's laptop by using it so much she never had any time on it so by the time I was in sixth grade, she had given up and given it to me. I used to get up early on the weekends (early meaning my parents weren't awake yet which is even more impressive if you know how incapable my dad is of sleeping in) and go upstairs to write. 

I wrote hundreds of half finished, barely begun, terrible stories. Then, in seventh grade, I wrote a story that I actually finished. It came out to roughly 40,000 words which is fucking impressive for a twelve year old and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise. No, it wasn't very good. But it had all the elements necessary for a good story: conflict, tension, rising action, even an ending. 

It was around that time that I decided I needed to get better at writing dialogue so I decided to write plays. Not good plays but we still performed them with the neighbor kids for our parents and it was fun. See, having a writer for a friend can be fun!

Once high school rolled around, I spent my summers writing a series of five books about a girl who could control air, earth, fire, and water. Again, not the best but by the time I finished the fifth book, a few weeks before I left for college, I knew. I wasn't just playing at this. I was a writer. 

It took me almost eight years of writing to say it: I am a writer. I've put in the time to get good enough that I know most writing sucks.

It took me almost ten years of writing to say this: I need to revise this. So I did. And then I said the scariest thing yet: I am good enough to be published.

Eleven years I've been writing. Coincidentally, right now I have eleven stories I'd consider book length. 

I'm not even twenty one yet. Just think of all the stories I have left to write.

It's going to be wild, terrifying, exhilarating, brilliant, insane, frightening, breath taking and every imaginable thing in between. That's life. That's writing.