Some Musings Part III

If you want to be a writer, don’t go to college. Controversial, I know, but it’s the truth. In high school I was the girl who scribbled away in the corner ignoring what the teacher was saying in favor of recording the fantastical stories that were floating through my head. I got in trouble for it more than once, most notably when a teacher ripped my notebook out of my hands mid sentence. In retrospect, it’s obvious she was more offended I wasn’t paying attention to her rather than having any actual argument as to why I shouldn’t be allowed to write. I was never disruptive, I never passed notes, my grades were good, at least in her class, and I always sat quietly, but I just did my own thing.

I wasn’t nearly as prolific in college. Whether it was the extensive amounts of papers that had to be written to an exacting standard, or the sleep deprivation from being paired with some of the worst dorm mates imaginable, I just couldn’t write anymore. All my creativity and motivation went out the window, and by the time I graduated college the two things I loved most in the world, reading and writing, were dead to me. That, and my copious amounts of student loans, is why I would never recommend college to an aspiring writer. You can only learn to write by writing, and you won’t write in college.

By the end of November last year I had completed Nanowrimo for the first time since junior year of high school. I actually reached the 50,000 word count within three weeks but was nowhere near done an actual book draft. But I stopped because by the end of November I had realized To Private Ford Rayburn was actually…good? Baffled, I set the book aside and finished The Funeral of Robin Goodwin I and published The Chaos Child. Then, as the Kickstarter for The Chaos Child came to a close, and feeling burned out from the Iron fae world, I revisited To Private Ford Rayburn. What followed was a writing frenzy the likes of which I haven’t seen since high school. I threw out the Nano draft and started over, taking the story seriously. I was writing three to five thousand words a day, I didn’t feel like I had done anything if I didn’t write at least two thousand. Even with a slight hiccup in the summer that stopped my progress for two weeks, by the end of August I had the first draft of book 1 and the 70% done of book 2. I also had written enough to split the story in two. I have never been this prolific in my life but honestly, it’s amazing.

To be continued…