Sold My Soul

So, my dad started a writing blog over on wordpress (look at the Blogs I Read for The Book of Writing, that's his blog). His first post was about why he writes and that got me to wanting to write a post about why I write.

Now I was thinking at first, after reading his post, that I was quite the odd ball with my reasonings for why I write. My dad's reason for writing is because one of his teachers read The Hobbit to his class and he fell in love with the written word via that. And I've heard a lot of people say they got into writing because they read a book that inspired them, or they had a teacher who read to them and inspired them to write.

I don't fall into any of those categories.

So I asked my roommate why she writes (because she's a writer too :) ) and her reason was just because she came up with a story over a few years time and wanted to put it down on paper. I didn't feel so weird after that.

I started writing because of a homework assignment.

In kindergarten.

My kindergarten teacher gave us an assignment to write a story. I don't remember what the parameters were or any of that but I came up with the story and told it to  my mom and she wrote it for me 'cause, come on, it was kindergarten and my story had a lot of big words in it, or something like that, haha. But anyways, I came up with a story about a cat who was friends with all of the other animals but the dog. My mom still has that story too. It lacked a plot and didn't really have an real ending of sorts. But I fell in love with telling stories, coming up with all this stuff was awesome. And after that I became a writer.

I never wrote anything substantial growing up because I never really had my niche, my genre, my special writing place. I loved to come up with stories, oh yes I did, but I cold never really come up with anything more than a paragraph. In middle school and high school I wrote some awesome short stories but nothing big. I wanted to be a published author! I wanted to have my book sitting on the shelf next to Anne Rice!

Sure, I tried to write loads of stories in high school (It should be known now that I call my manuscripts 'stories' rather than novels or MS's because it works so much better for me that way *shrug*). I had one that was about a high school loser who was always picked on by the football team start killing the football team one by one. That was until I showed it to my therapist and she asked if I was suicidal and depressed. (It was a fanfiction for Elijah Wood. My best friend had said she was fed up with all Elijah Wood fan fiction being love stories. So I decided to write one where he was a murderer. When I told the therapist this, she asked my if my best friend was depressed, homicidal and suicidal. *eye roll*) That stopped my want to write that story. Then I started on Temporarily Insane, a story that takes place in a mental institution. I had too many characters and then never could finish it. I loved that plot line though.


Before I go any farther, I had one friend in high school who I would always go over to her house and when I was there, we would write stories together. The full length manuscripts I wrote with her were, until 2008, the only full length manuscripts I had ever written. And those were co-authored.


Well now, there comes 2008! I found out about NaNoWriMo a week before it started and talked my roommate into doing it with me. And we won! It was awesome!


As of now, I have 2 (mostly) completed novels. By 'mostly' I mean they need to be cleaned up. And the second one will probably never see the light of day, but I hope to all high heaven that the first one does! Because it's awesome and I'm evil that way. (Long story behind that >.>)


Well, anyways, that there is why I write. And my journey up until now-ish. Hope I wasn't too boring there.


Laters!


PS I'm thinking about putting music on my blog. Not sure yet though.