Papa was a storyteller par excellence. He would take ordinary every day happenings and turn them into magical stories. Around 66, I decided to write down his stories, as an excuse to teachers for practicing handwriting . After a few were read by teachers as short essays, I found my school schedule changed to include "Creative Writing" as an extra curriculum activity. This expanded my love of writing tremendously. Papa had made me promise that one day, I'd write novels. Sadly, he passed away in 74 and life turned upside down. It took so much of my time, marriage, work, travel and munchkins, I did few short stories but never anything near novel-worthy. That happened in late 90s. Three whole series later and I finally wrote a full four novel series. Life turned upside down again recently and out of respects for my departed loved ones, I'd shelved everything. Just waiting for two items to conclude and once those are done and dusted, I'm hoping to go back to my current WIP, Heavenly Unions Trilogy. Besides writing on my blog, here and my stories, I create eBook covers and trailer videos. Thankfully and with encouragement from daughter, I've completed the list of my characters for the latter. I've entertained my munchkins with my storytelling growing up and they got into it within their school experience. It may be all electronic these days but I still write emails to friends. I used to write in diaries but somehow they disappeared. Of course, I've found out why they were disappearing, it's fine. Nowadays, my diaries became my blog, so I get to keep them the way I want . So, there you go, my writing journey in a nutshell, well...kind of eheh...
Good morning to all- Caitlin- I enjoy reading your account of your journey in words very much. It seems that working in words just may be an inherited condition- and like many other inherited conditions, impossible to eradicate. I must say that as a writer myself, seeing your words and thoughts in print- either ink on paper or electronic- is one of life's great rewards. And the only thing better than seeing your name following "By _______" is seeing the words "Pay to the order of ___________" on a payment check. Please keep us up to date on your work. you all be safe and keep well- Ed
Thanks @Ed Marsh . I'm hoping to find the courage soon to get back to it. If you want to read the synopses, then check out my link on my profile page. Cheers!
If 'working with words' is an inherited condition as Ed says then sadly its one that I did not grow up with, this may have something to do with my poor writing skills for it takes so long to put words to paper or to computer that by the time I get my initial thoughts saved in some form I have forgotten much of what I was going to say. That my poor spelling and hunt and peck keyboarding then needs extensive corrections means the thoughts filling my brain rarely get shared so treasure not only the ability to put words together in a entertaining form but also the ability to put them into readable form easily. I can FIX just about anything but writing about doing so is a slow and error filled operation !
There are a few radio talk show hosts that say they have or are writing a book, but I wonder if they are actually doing the writing or do they have a person doing the "sit at a keyboard" writing? I doubt that radio host has the time to actually put a book together, so they have a ghost writer put it together under their name.
You @Don Roles and my husband. He was a brilliant ship designer and could make complete drawings for every part of them ships. However, writing his reports was a chore he couldn't accomplish. As I had the writing bug, more often than not, I'd be doing the same that's seen in Harry Potter films. Ron asks Hermione for help with an essay and she replied that she was going to do his introduction. I ended up doing most of his reports. Thankfully, I knew the naval lingo. He'd only had to rewrite it in his own hands . So, I know a wee bit how you feel. I became his personal report writer...
I went through a period where I took it into my head that I would try my hand at writing science fiction. I'd been a reader for a long time, and even found a library that had back issues of the pulp magazines (Analog, Galaxy, etc.) which also contained a lot of "gossip" about prominent authors in the field and events and goings-on in that corner of the publishing world. I was maybe 15 or 16 when I acquired a small portable typewriter of the old cloth ribbon variety. I started writing dumb stories of maybe 6 pages at most (double spaced) but nothing any good or memorable today. At one point though I had a 30-pager I thought was good. I remember most of the details but in hindsight it all sounds silly so I'm not talking. LOL Anyway, I passed it on to one of my best friends. Never did get a lot of comment back and it was almost 3 months before he returned my manuscript. A year later he admitted that his older sister had taken it and reworked and then turned it in for college credit in a writing class. Grr. I felt, not violated, but somehow cheated. I'm pretty sure I didn't attempt any more original writing after that. But in truth I wasn't good at it anyway.
Unfortunately Caitlin my son appears to have inherited my affliction, in addition he is a 'lefty' so his handwriting is perhaps even worse than mine (when I say hand writing I mean printing for our script is totally illegible). However he, like I, can fix just about anything electrical or mechanical, I suppose all such skills can be taught but a natural affinity for some things seem to be built in from birth. PS over 20 'typos' or spelling errors in this short note till reread and corrected, my mind is way ahead of my single finger, thank god for spell check!
Don don't sweat the small stuff, tell it like it is and you can always go back and edit it. Good luck.
Some people were very popular writers od books. Its all according to what we consider proper. One of my favorite writers was Lewis Grzzard.I also like Mark Twain and many ancient Roman Scholar's like Cicero and Cesar. A short video of Grizzard, I'll come back with a few of his million seller books, like 'Don't Bend Over In The Garden Granny Them Tators Got Eyes' , Elvis is Dead and I don't feel So Good Myself.'.
Thank you for that Marie an avid reader who simply inhales books I had never read or even heard of Grzzard let alone read any but your clip of those titles made me go looking and a few quotes now have me looking much deeper.
Your welcome Don, he was also fairly famous for his columns in the Atlanta Constitution Newspaper. https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=4916...S9uZXdzL2xld2lzLWdyaXp6YXJkLWNvbHVtbnMv&ntb=1