My Writing History (originally posted at DarkLightLullabye)

I suppose there were signs early on that I was destined to be a writer of words, a teller of stories, and, of course, a deeply random person.

In first grade, during free time, I would cut up little pieces of paper and staple them together, writing squiggly lines of "writing." When my teacher asked what I was doing, I informed her that I was making books for my teddy bears. WIN.

My first memories of profound story telling happened during the first month of 4th grade. While sitting at my table making "All About Me" posters, I proceded to tell my group a story with crazy twists and turns for about twenty minutes. They were enthralled, and confused, and listened until the very, very end. I only wish I could remember what it was about. Something about an orphan girl...?

7th grade was my first written story. For our end-of-the-year compliation of all the quick writes and poems we'd done, our last assignment was to write a 3-5 page short story. Mine? The 18 page masterpiece of "The Elves Of Enkanto," where the beautiful young Jade and her best friend, the elf named Daven (the name of my crush at the time) find a magical key and have to save Wizard Limey from the evil Katherine (the name of the popular girl whom I hated). All major characters have some sort of green name (Jade, Limey, King Emerald, the dog Green Leaf), or are stolen from Homestarrunner.com. Oh, and I dedicated it to David Bowie "for he was the most awesome person in the 80s." My teacher was quite proud of my insight and use of literary techniques. At least, that's what she said.

I was seventeen before I did any more story-writing. I had gotten sick, and was realizing that I was going to have to spend my Junior year at home, recovering. I was bored and depressed and lonely... and was having really weird dreams due to medicine. My dad had his old work laptop sitting in the upstairs office for anyone to use, so after having a weird dream about people with silver and golden hued skin, I warped it into a 20 page dystopia story, and my writing took off from there. For the first few months, I'd sit in bed writing on the laptop (which I affectionately called Crappy Comp) for hours upon hours, but I was embarrassed. Everytime I heard someone coming, I'd throw my blankets over the computer and pretend I was reading. It wasn't until weeks later until I let someone see me with the laptop. I'd written at least four 30-page stories by then, and was completely dedicated to my craft.

I have now completed one novel, Let It Be, which I thoroughly despise. It's nothing like it started out as when I first wrote it at seventeen, and it's a crappy Young Adult romance about Immortals and child abuse. I absolutely hate it, and am thoroughly embarrassed by it, but it's my first completed works.

I have lots of other stories I work on periodically, but as I am switching my genre of books I read, I've found that I am liking my stories less and less... and am trying to switch them from cheesey YA to regular adult like fiction and literature. We'll see.

And then I blog. Oh, do I blog.

And that, my friends, is my writing history.