I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was nine years old.

My fourth grade teacher set aside weekly writing time, where I took my love of reading a step further and created my own stories.  At the time, most of them were simply my own life experiences, fictionalized with name changes.  But it was a start, a new outlet for my creativity.  I even quit Glee Club because it was in the same weekly time slot.  I liked to sing, but not nearly as much as I liked to write.

Stories filled my head, and I felt compelled to put them on paper.  It’s how I still feel today.  But about twelve years ago, about that time when a lot of major life events began to happen (going to grad school, meeting my future husband, getting married, starting a family, moving to a new place to launch his career in museum administration…you know, all those Important Things), I stopped making time for one of my first loves.  I stopped journaling, and I stopped writing fiction.  I even stopped reading.

It finally drove me crazy.

Nearly a decade later, another series of events took me back to my own written word.  In my new career as library support staff, I started to read again.  I discovered the movement that is called National Novel Writing Month.  My cousin, Lia Mack, published her debut novel, Waiting for Paint to Dry.  She visited the Book Discussion Group that I facilitate to talk about her experience, the month after we read Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing.  Everything culminated for me in King’s advice:

“You can, and you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”

So I started.  There have been many more discoveries along the way, discoveries that I look forward to sharing here.  But this was the start, nearly thirty years ago, and the second start, in 2015.

And now I’m in for the duration.