My Writing Journey

I started this blog because of my passion for writing. For me it isn't merely a hobby: it's my life! I feel called to write, and I just wanted to start a blog so I could share my passion with others. But I didn't want to just start a blog about writing, either: I wanted to share things about my life, too. I'm subscribed to a few writing blogs, and one thing that I like about them is that they share things about themselves, too.

I started writing when I was around five or six years old. Back then, of course, it was just silly stories about Disney fairies, but it was a start. My brother, who's a few months shy of two years older than me, also wrote some stories. We had fun with it. My spelling was atrocious, my sentence structure was nonexistent, and I introduced a new character every line. But what can be expected from a small child, anyway?

At about six or seven I was writing short stories--well, I guess now they'd be considered fanfictions--about Harry Potter. I jotted them down in small notebooks as I thought of them, and I remember typing one of them on my parents' desktop computer. I wasn't really allowed to type out my stories on their computer, though, so soon I went back to writing them by hand.

My brother and I played this game, where all of these people from all of these fandoms came together. Usually all of the men would go off to war, and every last one of them would return injured, so the women would have to take care of them. Well, we called this game "Adventure", and I wrote two or three stories about it. (Only one of them was ever finished.) The first one that I started I remember quite well: "Adventure: The Mission to Save Hogwarts". It had something to do with Harry and Hermione, Tony Stark, Leo Valdez, and a pack of wolves. No matter how terrible my writing was then, I think that was really what started my love for writing.

When I was eight years old I finished writing a work called Journey to Boulder City. It was about a group of animals trying to find their way to paradise, but my characters were poorly developed and the dialogue was terrible. There were plenty of plot holes, of course, and now that I think back to it, I realize that the entire thing was terribly boring. I wrote a sequel called "Journey to Boulder City: The Tale of Willow" when I was nine. I think it was worse, if possible. Plot holes galore!! At ten years old I wrote a short work called "The Ancient Tapestry", but I never did fall in love with it. It was hastily written plot, riddled with mistakes, thrown at four immature twelve-year-olds.

It wasn't until a few months later that I came up with my first REAL idea. I was playing outside with my brother when it hit me: I could write a series of books about an island inhabited by animals. These animals must defend their territory from the evil forces that lurk beyond their borders, threatening to destroy all in their path. The series would be filled with wise rulers, evil warlords, brave soldiers, a strong plot with many twists, and a huge world that was already stretched out in my mind. The first book would be called "Stripe of Crescent Hill". The idea was inspired by Brian Jacques's "Redwall" series, but I also yearned to describe the world like Tolkien.

I think I started writing the book that same day. I finished the first draft a few months shy of eleven years old, and it took up a whole 98 pages of my wide-ruled notebook. I was so excited about this book. Never had I felt this way about anything that I'd ever written! I could hardly wait to get started on the second book, Moss the Archer, which told the tale of a brave squirrel archer. I think I finished the draft sometime early the next year.

I spent that year writing, and by the time I was twelve I had four more drafts completed, begging for an overhaul. They need so much work still! In August of this year (I think), I finally finished revising and writing Stripe of Crescent Hill. I was so proud to finish that book--three years in the making. That hastily-scribbled story I wrote as a child was now a 53,000+ word novel.

I started revising the second book shortly after. It's been nearly a year since I started it, and I don't even have all of the chapters copied into my word processor yet. But this book needs a lot of work, much more than I expected, so I'm not in a hurry to get it finished. I'm quite excited to write my third book (which is still a hand-written draft), The Northern Invaders. I had to demolish the entire plot and build a new one from scratch because the previous one was unrealistic. I had to disassemble the entire prequel that I wrote because the plot was so flawed, and because of some pretty major plot holes that screwed up the rest of the books. I even had to sketch an entire new map because of what the title on my third book implies! Yes, it's been a long journey and it's been a lot of work, but it's worth it to me!