Yay! Another soul that took pity on me in my time of need…
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An Aspiring Author’s Journey
Writer: (rī-tәr) n. One who writes, especially as an occupation.
Author: (ôth
r) n.
a. The writer of a book, article, or other text.
b. One who practices writing as a profession.
Hmmm, writer? Or author? I never thought of myself as either really. Oh, I’ve composed music and written lyrics for as long as I can remember, but writing? As in, someone actually being interested enough in what I have to say to *gasp* read it?
I’m not ashamed to say how I started. Everyone has to start somewhere, yes? I wrote little bits and pieces all through school. Some I kept. Well, my mother, bless her heart, kept them. I could have cared less. Most ended up in the circular file though. Just odds and ends of a warped mind that I thought weren’t worth keeping. Some did end up as lyrics though. Those were keepers for me. But doing a ‘There once was’ and writing it through to ‘The end’ was not even something I’d ever entertained. Then, a few years ago, I ran across a story that couldn’t decide if it was romance or horror or a parody or a commentary on the human condition. Everything about it screamed Romance to me. Except is didn’t have a HEA. Now, you’re reading the thoughts of someone who cut her teeth on Victoria Holt and E.B. White. They had happy endings, happily ever afters. Even if one was just a pig and wasn’t really a romance, *g*. But this story didn’t have a HEA. And it bothered me. A lot. Because it should have. The more it bothered me, the more I kept coming up with different scenarios in my mind as to how it should have ended. This went on for a long time until I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I sat down in front of my computer and put to paper how I thought the story should have ended.
About half-way through it, someone told me I was writing ‘fan fiction’, and the way they said it, it sounded like something dirty. Dirty? There was no sex in my story. Yet. In fact, it was tame compared to a lot of my reading material. Then I figured it out. It wasn’t dirty in a sex filled, erotic way. It was dirty because it was an ‘imitation’ of writing. Something desperate fans did and did poorly, then stuck on the internet for people to gush over, simply because it continued the original story in some way. But no one considered it ‘real’ writing.
Didn’t matter to me. I’d already caught The Bug. I couldn’t stop. I finished my ‘dirty story.’ And while this was going on, a strange phenomena developed. I’ve always heard music in my head. It’s constantly playing in the background. Much to my surprise though, these strange characters crawled out of their little hiding places and started yelling over the music that they wanted their stories written down too. And they were incessant! While I was on the phone, talking to someone else, listening to the radio, sleeping. They kept yammering at me. Write this, I want to say that, he doesn’t do that, she does this to me.
If I was going to tell their stories though, I was going to do it right. No more ‘dirty’ for me. So I started taking some online classes. Also, I’m fortunate enough to have belonged for years to an online community where a couple of my friends are published, and they took me under their wings. They started to critique me. A lot of their comments were…harsh at best. But I wasn’t going to learn if they coddled me. Lied to me. So I listened and didn’t take it personally and I learned.
And I wrote.
And I kept writing until I thought maybe, just maybe, I was good enough to try subbing to a few agents. I must have done something right. I’ve had a few requests for partials and one full so far. And it only took me about three years! Record time in this business, I understand. But I’ve not been picked up yet, so I know I still have a long way to go. And that’s okay. Because I realized early on in the process that whether or not I ended up finding an agent or getting published, I’d become an author. A struggling one at best, but an author, nonetheless. And I’m proud of that.
I learned something else along the way. That real authors, though they’re published, are people first. They encourage and teach, and sometimes drag you forward, kicking and screaming when all you want to do is quit, because they’ve been there. They understand what you’re going through. Maybe it was a suggestion or a critique or just an offhand comment they didn’t realize would make a difference. But it did. Because they struggled once too.
So thank you to all of you who have helped me along the way, and continue to help. Someday, I hope I can pay it forward and encourage someone else the way Shiloh and several others have me.
Althea Preston
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🙂 Thanks, Theo!