Writing the Novel

I have always loved to write. When skillfully written, words evoke intense emotion and convey insightful messages. This process fascinates me! I've kept a journal since I was fourteen, and I've written lyrics to songs since I was sixteen. I even dreamed of writing a book "someday" but had supposed it would be a collection of short essays about everyday life experiences that later emerged as being quite remarkable. But writing a 459 page novel was not something I had previously imagined I could do...until I wrote the first page, and then the next page, and then the next one. What I learned was this: a novel writes itself when there's a really good story to tell. The process for this novel began less than two years ago when the ideas and characters started taking up conscious and subconscious space in my brain. I jotted down notes in a cool journal one of my six sisters, Miriam, gave to me in 2002. I had saved the journal for years knowing that I wanted to use it to write something really unique. Then in November of 2007, I sat in a coffee shop on Bainbridge Island with another sister, Amy, to share my notes with her and try to make sense of the story itching to get out of my psyche. One morning in June 2008, I woke up and said, "Today I write the first chapter!" And I did. The summer became immediately busy with unexpected events in life, followed by an equally busy fall time. I didn't write anymore of the novel until February of 2009 when I committed not only to getting the story out of my head and into a Word document, but to my career as a writer. I joined a local writing group, attended author readings as often as possible, and participated in as many writing workshops, seminars and conferences as I could squeeze in. Now I can't get enough!