I began writing as a child. I remember writing a long love letter to a boy I had a crush on and giving it to him at the end of a Friday. It was a long weekend for me. On Monday, I waited for his response. While it was not the admission of similar feelings I had hoped for, what he did say has remained with me to this day. “You’re a good writer. You should keep it up.”
I continued to write throughout my youth and my teen years, but it was not until my early twenties when I sat down with the desire to become a writer. In a Colorado winter, I wrote a piece long forgotten in a move and a divorce.
In 2009, I participated in my first Nanowrimo, National Novel Writers Month, where the goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. While I achieved the goal, I did not complete my first manuscript. It would take a second marriage and two children before the story finally came together. From the first manuscript came two more and another child. I received a publishing contract which, for many reasons, fell apart. I finished my B.A. in creative writing and a M.A. in Christian Leadership.
During this amazing journey, in 2012, I joined my first writing group, where I honed my ability to critique, focus on detail, check for point of view (POV) shifts. While the group grew into something new over the years as people finished their degrees, had families, and new priorities developed, I joined other writing groups and continued to grow as a writer and editor.
At the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, I met several published writers, publishers, and editors and through the pandemic grew into my own confidence. At the beginning of 2021, several writers prepared to walk into the Ozark Creative Writers conference. I spent several months working and critiquing with many authors. We left the conference with eleven awards. One of which was the piece I wrote during a Colorado winter, Polyamorous, which won the first runner up for the main competition of the event.
Overall, I have an education in creative writing and have critiqued and edited others’ work for the past nine years. I look forward to continuing this work into the future.