In 2018, I was working in a job that had no responsibilities. I had to show up and not cause trouble, so I had a lot of free time on my hands. At first, it thrilled me to be paid something to do nothing. But after a while, it was clear that doing nothing had nothing to offer.
So I fell into old habits. It started off with day dreaming. I would picture myself killing it in my role, once I could do something at work, and impressing my superiors so much, they would thank the heavens for my arrival. It was fun picturing the world that way.
But before long, that wasn’t fun anymore. I started watching streaming shows with some of my prisoners in the land of no responsibilities. And I watched a lot. But I found that none of the current shows matched my needs for entertainment. And so, with a keyboard in hand and an unending curiosity, I started looking for what I needed.
And that is when I started writing. At first, my meandering story included every cliche of my favorites. It mirrored both Tolkien and Robert Jordan. And I was hooked.
Taking that mess of little over a hundred thousand words that wandered through three different storylines and several main characters, I whittled it down to the base beats. I took these beats organized the first trilogy of my story. But I did not know how to write like an author.
But the internet is my friend. I searched hard and long, high and low, and found the Snowflake method and I loved the idea of it. Except I didn’t want to reiterate on the same thing over and over. So I moved on to Stephen King videos, lectures from Brandon Sanderson, and articles on how to find your voice.
I finally understood the writing process. It wasn’t until later, that I didn’t really know how much I didn’t know, but that’s for a later talk. So I sat down at my keyboard again and low and behold, the words flowed from my fingers. I ran past the beats. I filled in the story. And I found joy in everything I wrote. I shared it with friends. I printed it out and carried it around like my favorite toys in middle school.
So I was writing. I was an author. And I had my story. But there was so much to do. Thanks for listening and please drop by next week to learn about my journey, to learn about writer conferences, the hidden world of gardening vs being an architect, and what an author does with their free time.
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