I know I am a day behind in posting this. My modem died a slow death. About nine or ten years ago, my toddler son decided to knock the small box off of a table.
Well, the spot where the power cord connected to the box got broken. I patched it, and for all these years, it has worked. Apparently, way longer than it was supposed to.
Now I sit in our local Starbucks writing this blog post and hoping the new modem arrives soon. I get distracted people watching. But it does give me a reason to get out of the house. Not to mention characters for my fiction stories.
Since I am giving you a brand spanking new blog, I thought I would give you some of my reasoning as to why I picked the topic of writing for my blog. Would that be okay?
When did I start writing?
At age 12 I started keeping a diary. It was one of the tiny ones that held five years worth of writing on each page. The book was lucky if it measured four by four with four lines for each year.
That daily writing helped me get in the habit of writing each and every day. I pat myself on the back that I was able to do that every day for five years.
When I was a freshman in high school, my English teacher did a pretest for each chapter of our grammar book. If we got 100 percent, we could skip the book work. However, we had to do an independent project.
I scored a perfect. Guess what I chose to do? That’s right. I wrote my very first short story. It was about a young girl trying to be a famous rock star. I laugh now because I was heavily influenced by my love of Rick Springfield.
I must say I didn’t do bad with that story. The teacher said I needed to add dialogue. An easy fix if you ask me since most of my sentences looked like dialogue without the quotation marks.
My love of writing hasn’t stopped since then. I worked on the high school yearbook and newspaper staffs where I always got compliments on the articles I wrote.
My Bachelor’s degree is half Journalism. I did work for a local newspaper for a few months, but realized that wasn’t for me. Small town newspapers don’t pay much in case you didn’t know.
That didn’t stop me from writing, though.
After volunteering as a staff member for the local high school marching band, an idea struck me. I mean this marching band meant so much to me. For one, it was my alma mater. For two, I had developed a different kind of relationship with the band director and staff. They became great friends to me, and I wanted to do something in return.
In September 2005, my dream came true. I published Living, Sleeping and Eating Band, a memoir of my marching band days both as a member in three different bands as well as a staff member.
I don’t want to bore you with too much more about when I started writing. However, I am the author of two fiction books since then. More of which you can see right here on this website. I have also started a freelance writing and proofreading business.
Why did I start writing?
I think the biggest reason I write is therapy. When I first started writing back at age 12, I had moved from one town to another was the new kid in town. I think it was a way for me to feel better.
That “therapy” hasn’t stopped as I became an adult.
- Adjusting to another move during my high school years wasn’t easy. Now I realize it was a good thing because I have maintained friendships since then. I also discovered I wanted to be a writer.
- Adjusting to college life wasn’t easy either. In fact, I had a such a tough time I ended up moving home halfway through my sophomore year. Dorm life wasn’t for me.
- Filing for divorce and dealing with the custody issues hasn’t been easy for the past several years. However, between my human and furry kiddos, as I like to call them, and my writing, I have become a survivor.
Writing has helped me deal with tough issues in my life, as I’m sure writing could for you as well.
I want you to think about what I’ve shared here. When did you start writing? More importantly, why did you start writing? I think the “why” is most important. I mean anyone can put words on paper or a computer screen. Right? Why do we do it, though?