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I've wanted to be a writer since I first found out that books don't just appear on shelves by some sort of magic. Despite that, it's only been since early 2010 that I've decided to go for my dream of being published. What made this time different? Well, in 2010 I was coming to the end of my last job. I wasn't happy, I spent four hours a day commuting, and I was ready for something new. I was all set to leave my job, when they tossed me a curve ball and asked if I would consider staying on part-time. I said sure, but it was only temporary, and oh yeah, I wanted a three week break.
They agreed to my terms, and during my time off, I was playing a lot of Left For Dead. So much that it started infiltrating my dreams. I had a really vivid dream about a girl and two boys living in an underground shelter at their high school. That idea sparked the idea of my first "real" novel, Positive Tension. That book changed everything for me. I was so in love with it, that I put aside my need to be "perfect" and just wrote through the crap. I finished the book in June, 2010 and since then I've been a writing machine.
Positive Tension is tucked away in a drawer, but I will never forget that book. I'll also never be able to thank my husband enough for agreeing that we could get by on just his salary. No, it's not easy, but I have time to write, and in the past year I've written five novels. I never would have been able to do that if I was working, so I'm hopeful that one day we'll be able to get a paycheck from my work.
When I started writing my first book, I was at the start of the writer's path, and now I feel that I'm a decent way down it. I've conquered several fears so far, and I know that in order to become published, I'll have to slay even more. When I first started, I was jealous of people further along than I was, but that's no longer the case. I know some people might come behind me and get published before me. Everyone's paths are different. Some are paths through a park, with no obstacles, and other people's paths lead them through the fire swamp, yet they keep going.
The path doesn't end when we become published, though. That is the ultimate goal of any aspiring author, but you have to keep growing as an author and as a person in order to stay published.
Where are you on the writer's path?
You wrote five novels in a year?! You're my hero! The biggest hurdle for any writer, I think, is just . . . carving out the time to write. And it sounds like you've got that down.
ReplyDeleteThough I've been writing since I was little, I never focused on seeking publication until a few years back. I've since landed a job as a newspaper columnist and have channeled much of my energy into writing about myself (gee, that sounds pretentious -- but I don't mean it to be!), so my fiction-writing has gone on the back burner. I want to change that in 2012.
I wrote five novels in a little less than two years. :) Good luck with your personal writing!
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