As I read through some of the other posts from the Merry Go Round tour, I note a trend. Many of them wanted to write from an early age. They made up stories and tried to write them as youngsters.
I can say part of that is true for me. I made up stories but I never bothered trying to write them. Sure, I had the Car Wars going in my bedroom, or the fire emergency with my trucks. Those I saw as mine, my play time.
It wasn’t until I reached high school that something about writing really started to grab me. That started with a simple assignment, where I copied my favorite author at the time. Parody and Satire weren’t my strong suit, as became apparent from that project. My writing slacked until the following school year, when a teacher assigned us a daily journal entry for English class. She held no requirement on what the entry had to be, so I could write a paragraph of story each day. It rambled and didn’t go very far, but it was story.
My creative endeavors stopped for about three years, until I got to a composition class in college. There, I had a professor who did both the freshman comp class and the creative writing class. It helped that he sometimes crossed his curriculum between the two classes. He gave us a writing prompt at the beginning of class, challenged us to write a paragraph based on the prompt. My writing impressed him enough that he wanted me to write more. After class, I found a way to expand the story, but when I went to talk to the professor before the next class, I discovered he’d died in a car accident the previous day.
That day was when I truly started writing.
I spent about five years with the semiserious thought process working toward a couple stories, but nothing concrete. I’d completed the story started in class, but it never went anywhere. Refocused in 2000, but continued with the “I write when the muse strikes” commentary. So it was spotty. I finally took my writing seriously in 2005, when I entered my first National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo).
That is my path. I’d love to hear the path of others when it comes to why they write!
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Today's post was inspired by the topic “Why I became a writer” as part of the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour, http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com/. This ongoing tour allows you, the reader, travel around the world from author's blog to author's blog.
Don’t miss tomorrow’s posting over at: http://suesantore.com/
If you want to get to know nearly twenty other writers, check out the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour: http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com/
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