Ready.

I was thinking today about the first novel I ever wrote.  The characters I came to love, the story I spent hours developing, the glaring mistakes (like misspellings), and the not so obvious mistakes (like how I didn’t research what it would be like to be a lawyer in the 1800’s before making my main character one).  But I wrote a book-length manuscript at the age of 16, and, if nothing else, the experience was invaluable to me.  

But then my thoughts went further back.  My husband asked me today, “What did you do most of the time, growing up?”  

And my immediate answer was, “Read.”  

The truth is, most of my free time was spent reading.  Reading before bed, reading over lunch, reading after school.  My world was peopled with the characters I encountered through literature, and reading so much did birth a desire in me to write-- but I had no idea how that desire would ever come to fruition.  I had no idea how to develop characters or construct a story.  Then one year my mom suggested a program for me called “learn to write the novel way”, which would take me through the process of writing a novel and cover a year of high school english.  I was thrilled.  Finally, I would be able to take this deep desire and make it a reality.

My first book was a result of that program, and, as I said, the experience was invaluable though the result was feeble and faulty.  

I went on to earn a creative writing degree from UNM and my writing continued to improve by leaps and bounds, but I was still making a lot of mistakes, and when I read over manuscripts from that time it is rather painful to see them.  I have tried, from that time, to consistently put out creative content.  Sometimes I have succeeded more than others.  A year and a half around the time I had my baby I barely put out anything; but in this past year I have been very happy with my creative content, mainly poured into the website devoted to Dungeons and Dragons.  But having consistent output sparks my creative mind and helps me improve in my writing, if all I am doing is summarizing a session of DnD, I still think about how to make it sound good, what literary techniques I can apply to make it sound better, how I can improve my character development, etc.  

I feel like now, at the age of 28, I have finally become a good enough writer I could finish a manuscript and seriously think about publishing it.  But the fact that it took me 13 years to reach that point is rather daunting, and now I still have to finish and attempt to publish, which is a whole other daunting mountain.  Still.  Thinking of that today, felt like an accomplishment to me.