My Growth in Writing
Writing is the one thing in my life I have always come back to. In sixth grade, I started what was intended to be a magnum opus, a grand epic of boys against girls in a fantasy-style sixth grade class. Many of my classmates (those I liked and those I didn't) had barely veiled names; there were also tightly bonded horses that were entirely magical, and everyone swung swords. It was grandly titled, "War!" I got perhaps four pages into it before becoming utterly bored.
Besides, I already had my life mapped out. Since I clearly could not become an astronaut (having ghastly eyesight), I was going to be an astronomer, and spend my adult years alternating between searching the skies for new discoveries and teaching eager young college minds.
I loved fantasy and science fiction pretty much equally at that age. My favorite books were Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" and Robert Heinlein's "Time for the Stars". So in seventh grade, I hand-wrote a twenty page science fiction story, loosely modelled on various books I loved, and without a great deal of originality. Still, my language arts teacher allowed me to read it in class in place of studying a different story; an opportunity I appreciate to this day. Luckily, my classmates were no more sophisticated than was I, and they seemed to really like it.
I poured my heart and soul into that world for years, trying to emulate J.R.R. Tolkien by writing a language for it, making maps, creating flora and fauna, creating my own version of crystalline structures to invent stones which never existed, worked on its history, architecture -- just about everything you could imagine to fabricate an entire culture. Taking a couple of creative writing classes, I worked on pieces of my world, and got deeply involved in writing poetry during that time. it was much better than my prose, and there was a point in time where I might have switched primarily from prose to poetry, if I hadn't loved creating imaginary worlds and stories so much.
But that wasn't my entire imaginary life. I was unhappy, beginning to suffer from severe depression, had untreated OCD, and significant social anxiety. My refuges were the plethora of worlds I created: fantasy worlds where elemental spirits tried to learn humanity; alternate realities where magical horses aided humans in battling evil; mysterious worlds where the guardians of humanity befriended dragons; other versions of my own world where young women wielded psychic powers, or became secret spies, or were gifted with impossible intellects; and of course, my loved science fiction world, which was more truly fantasy, for all its science fiction trappings. (Though I still find myself amused that I invented touch screen technology for it back in the mid-seventies, because I couldn't imagine advanced aliens pushing buttons and shoving levers).
During that time, I started another writing project. This time I was ambitious. I was going to write a novel. I started writing it on my old manual typewriter, and finished the first draft in eighth grade. It was 60-70 pages single-spaced, and had very narrow margins. Though I had the general story, I couldn't think how to flesh it out, so I ended up making so many subplots to fill in the space that it got completely confusing. I was totally in love with my two main characters. It was awful, but I didn't know it. I was very proud of it.
I should add that I also worked on a number of short stories during this time as well, and kept up my imaginary life. It was more real to me in many ways than my everyday life. As a paraiah in my younger school years and a very lonely teen in my later, I didn't have a lot of distraction. I read, because it helped, and I wrote because I created. My works got quite a bit darker, because of the depression. It was my voice. I could talk about anything except what was important, but through my writings I could speak.
During the next few years I did two more drafts, each longer than the last, finally finishing up the third at the beginning of college. By then, it had dawned on me that no matter how much my writing had improved, it was still out of the mind of an eighth-grader, and I reluctantly shelved it as something I knew I'd never come back to. Sad, but I had more than a few other projects. I do keep my old works, and I have a real love for what they've done for me, but there really wasn't anything I could have done with the story.
And then, in college, my plans for the future took a sharp right turn. I couldn't hack Physics. I had intended to be an astronomer for most of my life, and had to face the fact that I was not capable of doing it. Because of the depression, I had issues with grades in high school, but now I was working as hard as I could in my chosen field, and I still couldn't manage it -- an experience which I had never before had. I switched my major to Linugistics. My plan was to become a professor, and to write books on the side.
I was working on two other projects, both of which are currently shelved but not discarded. On one of them, I wrote two hand-written pages every day, in and around my schoolwork. I loved college, and the cross-pollination of ideas that came my way really sparked so much creativity that I couldn't help putting it on paper. That was the first time I experienced writing steadily, instead of spewing out reams of inspiration, and then going dry for days or weeks. Writing at a pace helped me. I could always come up with some words, though I wasn't always happy at the ones I chose. Still, ideas flowed out of my pen when I didn't expect them, and I found it an amazing experience. I wrote a lot of short stories, and took a couple of fiction writing classes. One of them helped. The other didn't.
And then I graduated. And got a clerical job. And spent several years in increasingly severe depression. I did try. I wrote some short pieces and joined a writer's group, where I learned a fair bit. But I wasn't producing much. It was upsetting, frustrating, and hit my self-image pretty hard. Somewhere along the line, I had started thinking of my core identity as a writer: not an astronomer, not a linguist, not a professor, but a writer.
I've seen this a lot. Quite a number of young college students want to write. Most of them I've seen give it up. I was afraid I was going to be one of them.
I decompensated finally in the early to mid nineties, and had to stop working, and couldn't manage to go get the advanced degree i wanted. I had two young children at the time, and the depression and OCD were debilitating. But one thing I managed to rescue -- my writing. It had always been my haven, and now it was my lifeline. That was my identity. I couldn't self-identify as a career person anymore, and I wouldn't let my self-definition be someone else's identiy, as a wife or mother. I went back to the thing that had worked so well in college, of writing two pages a day. I convinced myself that I could separate the process of writing from the process of editing. I sent off a couple of things and got a couple of encouraging personal rejections. I wrote three novels, and honed my craft.
By 2003, I had another young child, but I kept writing. That was when I sold two short stories. Ever since then, I have published, not prolifically, but steadily. And I have gotten better as I honed my craft. I'm in a writer's group now that is amazingly helpful to me (seriously, being picky about what I need in a writer's group has been one of the best things for my work) and I have pushed my craft. I've taken chances. The high point of my rejections was getting a personal from F&SF. In 2011, I put out a stand-alone novella (with an awesome cover!).
And now I stand on the cusp of my first full-length novel publication. I've got a sequel in the works, and four other novels behind it that need rewriting, but which have a lot of promise. I'm not working for a large press. I no longer have the time to wait two or so years from each publishing house before sending it to the next. I'd love to get a big publication, but small press is all right. It enables me to use that voice which for a long time was silent.