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Thursday, April 07, 2016

Defining Moment

Continuing with blog ideas from online searching, today's topic is name one of the defining moments of your life. This is actually easy. Although I know there have been more than one defining moment, the biggest one involves writing.

I always had stories in my head. Believe me when I tell you that my Barbie and Ken dolls have really involved scenarios when I played and that my friends would be done long before I'd finished the scene (for want of a better word). They'd always be waiting impatiently for me to stop so we could go do something else.

I also was always interested in writing of some sort. As a grade-school student, I tried to create a neighborhood newsletter. I was on the student newspaper in junior high. Despite this, it never occurred to me to match up writing and my stories. I know, big duh, but I was a kid.

The turning point came in eighth grade. One of my best friends at the time started writing a book using everyone in our class as characters. I hated what she did with my character and asked her to change it. She refused. That's what prompted me to write my own story where I would have control (hah!) only I didn't write my classmates, I wrote fictional people.

I can't remember the characters names ::blush:: but I can remember the story. All full of teenage angst and a romance between two teenagers. Natch! The writing wasn't great. The plot wasn't great. But this is when I knew I wanted to write stories forever.

Of course, being practical, I decided to major in journalism while I was in college, which later turned to advertising copywriting. But that was never the kind of writing I really wanted to do. It was always novels. My dream would be to earn enough money writing that I could do it full time. That's all I've ever wanted to do.

But this was the moment in my life that became a driving force from then on. Fiction writing.