Welcome to my first blog post! I’ve never done this before so hopefully this is the roughest it will ever get. Before I get started on some more in-depth topics, I want to share with you my writing experience, background, and what got me to this place.
As you might have read in the About Me, I have loved reading and writing since childhood. Like many people, some parts of my childhood were filled with magic and wonder and joy. But other parts were trying, difficult to process, with several unfortunate circumstances that no one could have predicted or prevented. The good always comes with some bad. That is the balance and chaotic forces of life. That is how we know which the good parts are. How we learn to feel the full range of emotions. Some of my early writing was processing these types of experiences, learning to cope with them through characters that are not me, or only hold a small part of me. It gave me insight into my own feelings while allowing a bit of distance from the situation and from the full force of my emotions. To say I had an imagination was an understatement. Back then, there wasn’t quite as much distraction and stimulation as there is now, and little-to-no instant gratification. We spent hours in the car, driving to and fro, here and there, from one after school activity to the next. A lot of time for thinking, a lot of time to make up stories about the things I saw out the window. I look back on my childhood with fondness, despite the hard times, my mother did the best she could and she tried her hardest. I truly appreciate her and am grateful for that.
That was the base on which I started, but as a teenager, my imagination only grew. Teenagers have so much unfiltered, raw emotion. I often look back and envy my younger self for that. It’s amazing and unparalleled in it’s unrelenting force. I’m happy that I did appreciate it while I had it. I wrote constantly. Stories about everything, anything I could think of. And that’s when I learned I’m a story starter. I can come up with some amazing beginnings, but to finish them… not one long story did I finish. A few short stories, particularly for school, sure, but not anything of length. I still love the short form even now, and I’ve gotten much better at it. I do have to say, I came up with some amazing premises. Some I still look at today with surprise and intrigue. There’s a few of my current works-in-progress I’ve expanded on and changed that are from this time in my life. I couldn’t leave one or two alone to fade away, I still needed them in my life.
Writing never fully fell by the wayside as I grew up and pursued other careers, interests and adventures, but it was only a hobby. Something to do to relax. During this time, one story in particular floated above the others. One that has shared roots with two friends and that is still being written for fun even today. It taught me a lot about characters, consistency, and writing in general in a very natural way. A way that I don’t believe I could have fully grasped if I hadn’t spent over a decade with the same characters, writing and re-writing the same scenes, both on the computer and in my head.
At some point in my journey, I turned back to art with new enthusiasm and went to film school. This is where I learned structure and discipline. Where long days of writing turned into nights. Where I learned how to finally finish a project, what a three act structure is, what acts even are and how to expand on them, and what rising action and causal progression mean. What is an inciting incident vs a first act turn is. What the dark night of the soul is. What themes and beats are. What can you show and what you can tell. How to solicit and receive feedback. How to be commercial, and how to be niche. What is the benefit of both?
My teachers were amazing and many had real world experience in writing projects that made it through production. I trusted their opinions and their feedback. And not only did I do the homework assigned, but I also took many other ideas to them to have critiqued.
Learning to write scripts for a visual medium, I learned to write lean, to cut what doesn’t need to be there. How to trim away the excess in order to emphasize. It was unbelievably difficult, exhausting and exhilarating, all at the same time. There were very difficult times during this diploma, deaths in the family and long distance relationships, but it was worth it and if I could live it again, I would.
That was truly the start of my writing journey. And from there, I went from day job to day job, as I tried to get my foot in the door of the film industry. Easier said than done, let me tell you. But I did eventually and was overwhelmingly busy for a while. And though I’ve always had fairly physical jobs, I had never quite put my body through the wringer like this. And ultimately, it simply gave out. A disease I was unaware of, but that had probably be brewing for many years, reared it’s ugly head and I quite literally physically collapsed.
I was forced to stop.
This is very difficult to do when you have so much momentum. But it wasn’t a choice. So I had to rearrange my life and I fell into a bit of a rut. Now many things happened during this time: the most beautiful wedding day ever, medical gaslighting and just general confusion, and a move away from the area in which I always lived. And with the rut, the emotional roller-coaster and chronic illness came some amount of depression. Looking back, it was quite inevitable but at the time I was in denial. Rising out of that has be a long process, but because it was due to circumstances and outlook about those circumstances, with hard work I could help lift myself out of that.
During that time, I decided to discover the book publishing industry. I dabbled a bit in short stories here and there, and explored how the system works. Now together with a flexible day job, I am finally venturing out into wild world of self-publishing novel length science fiction and fantasy. I’m excited to take this step.
Every twist and every turn taught me something new. I’ve learned so much and yet am at the start of a fresh path. Life is full of contradictions. And I hope to capture that chaos and confusion in my writing while keeping things entertaining. Ultimately, my favourite stories make reading fun, enjoyable, and exciting, even for adults; and I want to keep that going.
Thanks for reading! If you’d like to follow me on my journey, join my email list below!