Just over a year ago I typed six words into my Notes App. It was simple, the idea of an idea.
The note read: Dramione Freaky Friday Body Swap story.
In the year since those six words have changed how I spend every waking moment.
I have always had creative hobbies. I sew, knit, quilt, paint, draw digitally, scrapbook, decorate, I even papier-maché. But writing fan fiction has consumed me in a way that nothing else ever has.
It lives within me. It never rests. It never sleeps, even as I myself dream. It strikes me with inspiration in the most unexpected moments and fills me with a single-minded focus unlike any I've experienced before.
What began with six little words in a Notes app has snowballed into over 200,000 words.
My goal for my first year of writing was pretty simple. Ray Bradbury says, "quantity produces quality." So my task was set. Write. And just keep writing.
I wondered if I had put too much pressure on myself -having given birth to my first child in March of last year, just two months after that very first note.
But I know now that I was already doomed. Those six words were the seeds of an idea that quickly rooted into my brain and became impossible to pull out.
Isabel Allende said, " I need to tell a story. It's an obssesion. Each story is a seed inside of me that starts to grow and grow, like a tumor, and I have to deal with it sooner or later."
All of this to say that as I reflect on my first year of writing stories, I've decided to start documenting my journey here. I want to record what I'm learning so that in another year I can look back again.
I can't yet say that quantity is producing quality. But I'm enjoying more than just the act of writing -I'm enjoying learning a new craft. The methods of creating stories is fascinating and switching my perspective from reader to writer has opened my eyes to understanding why I love the books I love and how to create a slice of that for myself.
With my child starting day-care and I returning to work next month our new reality will bring a whole new set of challenges to my creative writing journey, but I'm excited to see where this leads me and my stories.
A year ago six words changed everything. I can't wait to see what the next six will bring.
