Writing Is the Easy Part!

Once upon a time in an elementary school in Eastern Kentucky, a fourth grade girl named Shannon stayed after in her English class, patiently waiting to speak to her teacher. In her hands she held a sheaf of twelve front and back pages of text, handwritten in a careful looping scrawl, every single "i" dotted with a heart. It was her first manuscript.

Now, Shannon understood that at nine years old it was unlikely she'd get this particular piece published -- It would be a risky venture for a business to put much stock in such a young person, and she was pretty sure that it might possibly violate some sort of laws -- but she knew she had to start somewhere. When the classroom was empty she plopped the work down on her teacher's desk excitedly.

"Will you read this and tell me what you think? I know it's not that great, yet, but it's not finished!"

Her teacher thumbed through the pages, careful not to dislodge the butterfly paperclip holding them together.

"Of course! I'm excited to see what my best student has written."

That beaming little girl was me, twelve years ago, and that teacher is the reason I am here today doing all that I can so that I can do what I love for a living. Even though that story, looking back, was genuinely terrible (a young girl magically gets transported back in time to a prehistoric era by a biscuit, which is promptly stolen by a tiny dinosaur) my teacher's feedback was overwhelmingly positive. She told me that what I was doing was wonderful and that, if I enjoyed it, I should pursue it. So here I am!

Very recently I began the ordeal of turning my writing hobby into (hopefully!) a career in writing. I launched a page on Patreon.com, started this blog, and have recently begun a Facebook campaign to draw attention to my cause and my goal as a means of generating traffic to the first two pages. After all of the years I have spent struggling with writer's block, my own personal pitfalls as a writer, and balancing my recreational and personal writing with my necessary, required school writing, I wouldn't have dreamed that all of that would be the easy part of this adventure! Until recently I didn't understand that the quality of the writing doesn't matter if the right people aren't reading it. In fact, content and quality both become moot when there is no audience for the work. Thus, the real challenge has begun.

I know that I am a good writer. I know that the more I write the better a writer I will become. My goal now is to work like a dog and truly get my foot through the door into the world of creative writing professionally. This blog is going to be my way of interacting with my readers more personally than I do elsewhere. I want my audience to know what's going on, how things are going, and where I am at in the process of getting started. It will also be a place for me to voice my personal concerns and struggles with certain aspects of the process, discuss the challenges faced, and to celebrate milestones with the community as they happen. It will also be an opportunity for my readers to get an inside look at how my creative process works.

In the words of Rudyard Kipling, "I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind." Take a trip with me, a vacation where you don't ever have to leave your own home. Come and experience with me the highs and lows of a grand adventure from the shadows of obscurity to the spotlight of publication.