Hello, all! I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to blog about today, but I decided to talk about my writing journey because it’s a question I get a lot. My writing journey is a little unique, so hopefully it’ll be interesting to read!
I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, but I began to take writing seriously when I turned thirteen. My mom bought me the program called “One Year Adventure Novel,” and that’s how I began to write books. It’s a year long program (obviously), and for one half of the year, you plan out your novel; for the second half, you write.
When I first started this novel, I was SO excited. It was about a girl whose brother and father got captured by pirates, and it was up to her to save them. While it was an intriguing idea, I suppose, it only was fun for the first half of the year. Up to that point, I’d been writing, but the longest thing I’d ever written was a seventy-page manuscript called “The Richardson Family Tragedy” (except “tragedy” was misspelled to be “tradgy”). Otherwise, I hadn’t taken writing seriously. So, when I sat down to start writing it, I had no idea what I was doing. I had a plot, characters…motivations, descriptions…but no words.
Eventually I finished the novel; I wound up writing close to a third of it in one day because I procrastinated so much. I absolutely hated it, and although I was proud of it and gave it to all my friends to read, that book will NEVER come out of my drawer. Ever. Again.
Flash forward a few months, and I’ve written three to four thirty-page stories—but I can’t finish them because I didn’t plot them out. So, I decide to sit down and plot out a trilogy about eight telepathic kids in one day. And I did. By the next day, I’d started a new word document and began writing what is now “Trapped.” It took me a few months to write “Trapped,” and the second and third books were each finished in one month (I did each one for two NaNoWriMos). I was a severe underwriter, so none of them reached above thirty thousand words. Even though I didn’t know how to edit or add words to my manuscript, I decided they were publishable (? I really have to question my judgement as a fifteen-year-old?) and went to a writing conference.
Believe it or not, I actually got offered three different contracts for the series (something very few people know about!). I turned each of them down because I felt like I wasn’t ready, and neither were my books, which I now know. In the long run, I’m glad I waited—my books are closer to being ready now than they were then.
Flash forward another few years, and here I am today. I’ve realized I will never write YA fantasy again because historical fiction is my first love. I’ve figured out I have a lot more to say when I’m writing than I did when I first started at thirteen. Writing every day is a lot easier than I thought it would be. Building a platform is important! Most importantly, I’ve learned to write what I love. Sometimes it’s hard to take a break from my WIP to look at other story ideas, but I realized it’s something I have to do because I really need to write historical fiction.
Now, I’m working on rewriting and editing, and hopefully within the next few years I’ll have a publishing deal. : ) I hope that my little “writing journey” was interesting to you—stay tuned for another blog post next week!