Becoming a Writer

I don't know about you, but I'm always interested to hear how famous and not-so-famous writers get started.  I read once (and assume it's true?) Nora Roberts started with a notebook and pencil one long Northeastern winter when she had young kids.  I'm pretty sure I also read Susan Elizabeth Phillips wrote her first book with a friend acting as co-writers.

Like Nora (if only I could put myself in the same category), I started with a notebook and pencil.  It was about three years ago and I was working part-time.  I spent a great deal of time that year sitting in a car pool line for a good 45 minutes to an hour waiting for my then first grader to get out of school.  For as long as I can remember, I've had story ideas circling through my head like other people have grocery lists or to-do lists.  I never told anyone because I felt a bit like a freak:-).  Sometimes, my stories would be prompted by a song I'd heard or a news story I'd seen.  Sometimes, they just popped in there with no prompting.  It started as a child when I was afraid of the dark and couldn't sleep.  I'd soothe my fears by thinking of a fun story until I felt asleep.

I'd never had a creative writing class or tried my hand at writing of any kind since my school days, which at that point had been a number of years before.  So, I started from scratch.  I poured over dialogue tutorials and samples because at first, I had no idea how to write dialogue correctly.  Ironic because my writing now is very dialogue heavy (maybe too dialogue heavy but that's for another entry).  I researched, researched and researched some more.  Then, I researched again.  I read blogs, agent websites and anything else I could find.  Then, I got started.

My first "novel", and I use that word loosely, had too many characters (as my wonderful mother-in-law lovingly told me) and was a mess in many ways.  Still, in was a huge accomplishment for me.  At the end, I had a 80,000-word finished manuscript.  I finally started to tell the people closest to me and a couple of friends asked to read it.  Surprisingly, they loved it or were at least really positive about it.  A big step for me and a really exciting time.  After that, my husband bought me a wonderful MacBook Air, which I'm writing from today, and I no longer use paper and pencil except for times when a thought strikes me and I can't get to my MacBook for whatever reason.  To this day, I always carry a notebook in my car:-).

My story is not yet a success story but I like to think it will be someday.  For now, it's still a work in progress.  One in which I continue to research and learn on a daily basis.