Was there a moment in your life when you knew you would become a writer?
I have always had a wild imagination, creating weird worlds and ideas in my head. My mom once told me, when I was really little, I made up a story about being in a karate class. From her description, I told a vivid tale to my friend's mother, sharing details about passing a test to earn an orange belt. The only problem is... I've never taken a day of karate in my life.
I bring up this story of me lying to my friend's mother not as a way to call myself a liar, but to illustrate how, at a young age, I wanted to create something that didn't exist. I can't directly recall this moment, but I do understand the meaning of it.
Flash forward to seventh grade. For my sort of first epiphany moment, you would have to go back to middle school.
After reading Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends, I knew I had to write poetry. I wasn't particularly observant when it came to the details classic poetry requires, but I was good at creating funny stories with rhymes, in the style of Shel.
In seventh grade, I wrote a folder full of poems that I let my teacher, Mr. Taylor, read over Spring Break (I think)- I could be wrong about the timing but certainly not the incident. When we returned to school, he informed me that they had been lost, and it broke my little heart to pieces. He joked that they weren't real good anyway, but I thought they were great.
Did I get sad and upset? At first, yes. In the long run, no, not really. I went home and rewrote everything I could remember and saved it all on into my adult years.
After my firstborn daughter, Amelia, was born, I updated those poems and published them via CreateSpace on Amazon - which is now KDP (Kindle Dirct Publishing). I sold a few copies to friends and family, as well as a few randoms overseas, but never really marketed the book. Recently, I removed its existence from Amazon, and took down my KDP account.
Here is a picture of the book (I have about 50 hard copies remaining at home):
Now, this isn't my only experience with writing. I had a couple of professional articles published by a local Atlanta magazine about 10 years ago, and I was the editor of my high school newspaper. I just never truly found non-fiction to be something that ignited my passion.
I could probably also thank my parents for purchasing a writing program on our first PC (a Hewlett-Packard with AOL dial-up) that would supply my little mind with short story ideas. If I remember correctly, the program had an idea generator almost like a slot machine. It might have been named "Fine Art", but I can't be sure.
If I'm looking back at my journey up to this point, and I'm being extremely genuine, I probably have always known I would be a writer. But the way I felt in seventh grade about writing, was the moment I knew it would be the creative outlet for me for the rest of my life.
Have a nice weekend!
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