The beginning...

I wish I could say that I've always known I wanted to be a writer... But I can't. I can say though, that I've always loved writing. There has always been something so appealing about sitting down with a pen and paper (that's right, some people still use them) and letting myself get lost in a story. It's like a whole other world that I can go to and do whatever I want. If I want to travel the world, all I have to do is pick up the pen and I'm off to some foreign land. Who wouldn't want to do that?

I have only recently discovered that this is what I want to do with my life. I literally just woke up one day and said to my husband "I want to be a writer". I have spent the last four years trying to figure out who I am. I refused to believe that I was destined to be a stay-at-home mom for the rest of my life. Don't get me wrong, I love love love being a mom, I just needed to do something more with my life. I knew I wanted to go back to college, I just didn't want to go without knowing what it was I wanted to do. So I spent years trying to discover what else I could do with my life and one day it just hit me, and it seemed so obvious. I write all the time for fun anyways, but for some unknown reason it never occurred to me that I could make a career out of it (how stupid is that). English was my best subject in high school (or more like it was the only subject I cared about enough to do the work), so I immediately decided to enroll in the local community college and work towards a bachelor's degree in English. I didn't want to waste any more time, and the few months that I had to wait to start classes were excruciating.

Finally the time came for school to start and my stomach was in knots. I hadn't been to school in seven years, what if I wasn't any good? What if I didn't like it? There was one other adult student in my English class and we latched onto each other before we even entered the room and quickly became friends. Our teacher was young, maybe a few years older than me, and fresh out of college. She was also a writer, and I was excited to be taught by her. 

After turning in my first assignment (a narrative essay about a moment in our lives that has helped form us) I became nervous. This was the first time anyone had ever read anything personal that I had written, and I spent the next few days checking my e-mail every two minutes to see if she had graded it yet. The e-mail came a couple weeks later (ugh, longest two weeks of my life!), and the feedback was great. She said she had really enjoyed it and asked if I was interested in publishing any of my work. She sat down with me before class one day and gave me a bunch of resources to look into. This was the moment that I was reassured about my abilities as a writer. It's different hearing positive comments from somebody that isn't my husband and it gave me the extra boost I needed. My doubts vanished and I could actually start picturing this happening. 

So here I am today, my first semester of college is over and I am starting this blog simply because I love to write, and what better place to do that than right here? I've got an exciting idea for my first novel, but I am having some trouble getting it started. I know what I want to write, but as soon as I sit down to do so I just come up blank. So I'm hoping that this will help me expand my writing abilities and also help me break through this wall that I keeping building up in front of myself.

I'm sure nobody is going to be reading any of this, but that's okay. Right now I am just happy writing for myself!

~A