Some Writing Thoughts

Well, I don't know if you have been able to tell by now, but I have a confession (such that it is) to make.

I am a writer.

Just in case it wasn't painfully obvious.

And I suppose it isn't entirely obvious. My dear sweet grandmother emailed me the other day, saying she had looked at my blog, and she loved it. She also said that I should try my hand at writing a story.
I felt slightly awkward as I replied to her that I already had written one story, and was working on two more. 

I wasn't always like this. A couple years ago I was a normal child. Well, as normal as I was then. I didn't like writing. Papers were a horrible thing to be feared.

In my sophomore year of high school, I took an American Lit class. My teacher gave us a special assignment at the beginning of the year. Every month we were to write something. It didn't matter how long it was. It didn't matter what it was on. The only restrictions placed on us were that it could not be a research paper, and we had to read it out loud to the class every other month.

That assignment was my gateway to writing. I wrote a short little story that first month. It wasn't anything special. But it opened my mind to the things I could do with a pen and paper. I started getting ideas for a story, and I actually wrote it. For the rest of the year, I spent my time working on my story, trying to finish it.

It took two years, but I ended up finishing that story.

Then I got an idea for another story, and I started working on that. Things just kind of escalated from there. And somewhere in there, I became a writer.

I've learned a lot. I've changed a lot. I'm super snobby about books and movies now. I cringe at basic spelling and grammar mistakes. Unless it's in dialogue of course, because you can do anything in dialogue. I have weird conversations with my writer friends that would - and have - scared passerbys. (or is it passersby?)

Writing is a lot of fun. There's nothing quite as amazing as going back and reading something you've created and realizing that you created something amazing, something people can feel and relate to, something that generates an emotional reaction. I've written scenes that have caused my friends to scream/squeal (from both joy and sadness/fear). I've made my little sister cry. (It was actually rather interesting. Mom told me she was sitting in bed, reading and crying, and I'm standing there laughing my head off.)

Words have fantastic power, and writing gives me a way to utilize that power. And it's pretty awesome.