What Started Me.

Daniel at Being Speshul asked “What Made You Start Writing”. Below is my response to this question.

I stole a notebook.


Okay, that minor criminal act didn’t entirely start my writing journey. Maybe it had some effect, but without a doubt, I would have been a writer in this life either way.


Besides, I didn’t really steal, per say. I just took it. Not from a store. Someone left the thing laying around at school in the library. The pages were empty. There was no name. I called dibs on that cute purple writing book fair and square.


Let’s take it back some notches so I can explain this all a bit better.


I was ten when Operation StickyFingers happened. I had already been writing a little at the time, mostly poetry and little pieces of flash fiction no longer than about five hundred words. There were stories inside me and they were bubbling to the surface.


Since I was four, I knew how to read. My passion immediately turned to the world of books and literature. Storytelling was fascinating and as I grew older, I began making up my own stories. I’d stage them out with dolls or draw them into cartoons. I could feel characters developing and speaking to me through my thoughts.


My father taught me a lot, too. By the time I was eight, before I moved away from him with my mom, I had learned about Elizabet Bathory, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Raven (Edgar Allan Poe), and so much more. He told me Celtic legends, some American history. I give my father a lot of credit for my love of literature and history. I learned early on that I rather like the “darker” tales mostly.


At ten, though, things in life changed drastically for me. I was being molested, and went through that ordeal for almost three years. That single act… picking up and taking that notebook… changed my life in more ways than I can count.


After I began writing in it, I had the sudden revelation that this is what I wanted to do in life. Nothing else. All I wanted to do, and all I’ve ever wanted to be. I wrote in it every single day to escape the real world, and the problems I had to deal with on a daily basis. Anything that came to mind went into that journal. Dreams and nightmares, short stories of horror or shorts of fairytale romance, poetry, etc.. The more time passed, the longer the stories became until the notebook became full and I had to purchase (I was reformed, no more stealing notebooks after that) a new one.


That purple notebook saved me. The day I found it, I was thinking about suicide. That’s a real dark place for a ten year old to be in.


I don’t want your sympathy. I’m simply telling my story. Today it’s a hell of a lot easier so don‘t worry! :)

Personally, I don’t care if I ever become some best-seller. I know that’s some rare chance. I just love writing as much as I love reading. Can’t live without it.


I started writing my first novel at fourteen. It was finished at eighteen. So, it took me quite awhile to write it. Ha. That one is shelved, though.

I’m now editing my completed second novel- which is the first book to a work-in-progress trilogy/series- and working on the sequel.




Are you a writer? What started you in writing?