Jen's Writing Journey

OK, so maybe post 1 should have been the “my story” post, but here it is anyway. This is an excerpt from an email I sent to the friend who gave me feedback on my first story:

It’s really funny how this whole thing started. When I learned at the beginning of the
year that I wouldn’t be able to move to full-time immediately, I asked a friend at my old employer if he could send some freelance editing work my way. Instead, he asked me to write a book. Thankfully, I was able to go to full-time about three days after my boss told me we couldn’t afford it–she went to bat for it pretty strong–because writing a book doesn’t actually earn you any money for a long time. It’s not even going to come out until June of next year, and they pay royalties every six months.

But the concept of making money at something like this awakened my desire to be a writer that had been lying dormant since a bad experience writing a story in high school. I simply had no concept of how to structure the middle of the story, so I got a bad grade because point A did not lead to point B very well. That deflated my ego terribly, and I didn’t try my hand at writing anything creative or personal again until after I turned in the book manuscript this year. (Well, there was a brief flash of inspiration after a Tori concert when I had to write a poem before we could even leave the venue, but that was different.)

I’ve got a couple story ideas that I’ve started, but this is the only one that has been so fully formed. And it is really like it is writing itself. It is a struggle to find the time to sit at the computer and capture it because it is swirling around in my head so fast.

With the reading I’m doing about how to structure a writing business, and this rekindled creativity, I’m really beginning to believe that I could achieve this childhood dream.

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