A huge thanks to everyone who upvoted and commented on my first introduction post, I really appreciate it!
That initial post gave a few details about myself and listed many of my likes and interests, but I didn't really go into my hobbies and the talents and skills I'd like to develop and share through Steem. It's a lot to cover in one post, so I'll start with the one I want to develop the most.
My Writer's Journey - Part 1
I've been an aspiring writer since I was a child. In 9th grade, my English teacher gave us a couple of creative writing assignments and the bug for writing fiction was born. And being a fantasy nerd, fantasy became my chosen focus.
Published For The First Time
12th grade eventually came along and one of my short stories was included in the premier issue of Brain Storm: A Magazine of Young Writers, published in April 1999. This publication was started by the Maryland Writer's Association as a way to showcase and reward the literary talents of Elementary, Middle, and High-school children. Sadly it seems that they no longer publish this magazine, but the MWA does still have writing projects for children, as well as writing groups for teens.
I was thrilled that my teachers wanted to include something of mine, and I wrote the story titled "Forgiveness" specifically for Brain Storm. The story is about a young girl who gets a lesson in forgiveness from a unicorn she meets in the forest near her home. Bad writing and horribly cliched, but it still remains my very first published piece. One day I would love to revisit the story and make it much better. Maybe I can do that here :)
(Disclaimer: I simply named the character after myself, it's not based on my life.)
The Stories Continue
Over the years I wrote many more stories. Soon, I want to say somewhere in the year 2000, I landed another published work. An e-zine, the name of which I simply am not able to recall, published my short story "The Advisor." This story is about a young, slightly handicapped boy named Ned Willis, who loves drawing fantasy creatures. After his father passes away, he loses himself in his drawings and shuts himself off from family and any possible friends. He soon meets a young albino gryphon, his favorite creature, who has similar struggles, and they are able to help each other.
This story also had some terrible writing, and still some cliched attributes, but it's one of my favorites. I began re-writing it many years ago but never finished. Then, due to unfortunate computer crashes and accidental hard drive wipes, I lost both the original copies and the rewrite I had started. However, I know the story so well it should be easy enough to start over.
The Eyes Have It
Funny tidbit regarding "The Advisor": About the time I started working on a rewrite, I attended a creative writing class taught by author Bryan Davis at the Florida Christian Writer's Conference in February 2007. In the evenings we all joined him for a critique session so we could get constructive feedback on something we were working on. I submitted the first couple of pages of "The Advisor" (the original), and a section where I wrote "he dropped his eyes" and "his mother caught his eyes" became an ongoing joke for future classes. My story became the "what not to do" when narrating moving body parts. I think Bryan even brought plastic eyeballs to later critique sessions to give a visual demonstration.
To Be Continued...
In the next post I'll cover the last 10 years or so of my writer's journey. I'll share with you the poem I mentioned in my first introduction post, as well as give you a small taste of a story that I hope to turn into a novel one day. Stay tuned and see you then!