My Story
My personal journey as a writer has been lonely and meandering one. For as long as I can remember, a thousand fantastic worlds have lived in my head, the safe places I went when the real world was too painful or quiet to bear anymore. About the time that I began to understand myself as an individual, about 11 or 12, I started trying to write down these worlds and the stories that took place in them. It was a carefully guarded secret, and something that only happened when the mood struck.
As one might expect with such an organic and aimless writing practice, progress was slow and I began attempting to write about five stories under the guise of one. When I grew frustrated with the inconsistencies and difficulty of progressing the plot, I split this one story into three stories happening at three different times but in the same world, which, sadly, did nothing to clean up the confusion. Now really frustrated, I set the project aside and attempted to write several other stories. I now had as many as seven projects going simultaneously. It would often take me months to decide how the next scene of any one story should go, and I began to realize that I was forgetting in the times between writing what I really wanted to say with each story. I also had this bad habit of writing 20,000 words worth of story, only to realize I’d only just set the scene for the main plot line. In the terms of the classic hero’s tale, the warrior hadn’t even set out on his quest yet…
My fellow writer, Kristen Kieffer was good enough to host my article on her website Well Storied., so to see more of this article, go here.