So, I decided I wanted to be a writer at the end of my senior year of high school, which was back in 2003. My teacher told us one day to just start writing—I forgot how long it was. It may have been like 15 minutes. But I started writing about a bunch of stuff that honestly made no sense, but then it started transforming into an idea that could become a story. I was like, well that's interesting.
But then life continued on, and I had to choose a career for college. With all the pressures out in the world, it isn't easy to actually be an author or an artist without a career to back that up. So began the journey of real life and college. I always had in the back of my head, though, that one day I would write a novel. I just needed to get through all the other stuff first.
So after switching my degree several times, I got married and got a job. The job consumed my time, so when I got home I was too tired to try and write. Then came a baby with my husband, my spark of light in the dark. We eventually moved, and I was able to stay home with her, but babies consume a whole lot of time! Then I went back to work when she turned one. With her being in daycare, she started getting sick more often and started having seizures. So, the next couple of years were dealing with that and not to mention, I have hemiplegic migraines. They are debilitating to say the least.
Eventually, everything health-wise was too much, and I started staying home again. I would sit in front of the computer trying to write something, and I couldn't. I once got to ten-thousand words and said this is crap and deleted it. I felt my words were nothing. That it wasn't as good as 99 percent of all other authors out there in the world.
Then we moved back to my hometown and for the past couple of years my dad had been sick. He would never go to the doctor. I never understood it. Eventually, he was diagnosed with cancer in October of 2017. He was sent home and arranged to have hospice make him as comfortable as possible given the circumstances. Unfortunately, my dad took his own life. As you can imagine, the series of events were tragic and sudden. Though, oddly enough, it was what kept me writing as I started my first book directly after. I didn't stop until I finished the first draft—which is now Quinsey Wolfe's Glass Vault.
Even if you think your first draft is a piece of crap, it's better to work with something than nothing. You can't work on a second draft with a blank page. On most days, I still don't think I am worthy of thinking I am an actual author, but I still try. The fact that we all have our own stories to tell makes us all authors, whether they are written on paper, on the computer, in our heads, we all have one.