Where it all started

My little kid journey into becoming an author

If you scroll back through this site far enough you’ll find a rambling post about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior. It’s most certainly not one of the best things I’ve written, but it’s a holdover from when this was my big blog of thoughts which had no focus and anything that came to mind was fair game. How did I end up writing about a ship that sunk a few months before I was born, you ask? Well…I worked in container shipping for a long time, then a song came on, you know the one, and I jumped down a rabbit hole.

That’s how I did it when I first started blogging. I ran with my first thoughts; no set theme, no edits, just me. I liked that format a lot and I pretty much use it here. I still drop these words in all at once, check for spelling errors because I am a notoriously bad speller, and then hit post. There are still days where I’m not sure what I’m going to write about until I start writing. If you’ve read any of these thinking What is she even talking about?, now you know why.

My brain functions in written terms. If you see me and I’m not in the middle of a conversation, I’m quite likely “writing” in my head. Honestly, there’s been several incidents of me multitasking - fully engaging with others and writing in my head at the same time. The collection of thoughts are not all novels, but there’s always something spinning around in there - a rant, politics, a poem, a new story idea, something different to do with an old story - ideas and the words that go with them take up the most space in my mushy grey playground.

So, this weekend when someone asked when I knew I wanted to be a writer the only answer was always. I write because I have to. It’s part of me. It sounds cheesy and cliche, and I’m not silly enough to think it’s unique to me, but it is the most honest response to that question. I will admit I wasn’t sure what exactly I was going to do with my writing. My young heart was very much a wannabe poet, but my teenage years did include one, very badly written, “book.”

I haven’t read it in over thirty years from start to finish, but I’ve scanned pages enough to know that my handwriting has always been bad, my spelling was even worse, and young me liked writing dialogue as much as current me likes writing dialogue. Anyone else would read it and call it a script. The notebook pages, with their black-ink scribbles, are still collected in my 1988 purple and yellow Trapper Keeper. I carried that hard plastic folder from class to class, adding new scenes and passing the pages around to a few of my friends to read while I wrote more. I doubt it ever contained the classwork it was purchased for.

We didn’t have online platforms to grow teen audiences, but if we had, I’m sure my NKOTB Go On Tour fanfic would have picked up at least a few readers. I was such a fan girl, and in pure, innocent, Tina Belcher fashion, the story definitely involves kissing. And probably looking at butts. But, in the same way I don’t recommend always watching the shows you loved as a kid, I know if I go back and read it now it would ruin it. I’m not that thirteen-year-old anymore, and I wouldn’t be able to keep myself from picking at it.

I did write it though. I plotted it out. I created characters and gave them backstories. I created lighthearted, romantic drama, and a group of female characters based off of friends and myself with unique voices. And while my handwritten pages would never have totaled more than a short story, starting that story, building through a middle, and writing out the end, planted the idea that that was exactly what I needed to do with my writing. No matter the format or genre, length or tone, what I need to do with my writing is tell stories.

Funny enough, I never gave this masterpiece an actual title.