A Writer is Born, Part I

   Try to imagine you are a reasonably average high schooler. Not too hard, I hope. Now try to imagine that, as that high schooler, you find a big box of dark blue books at your door. I know that usually big boxes of books aren't that exciting, but when they have your dad's -- and your -- name written all over them, exciting doesn't begin to describe. How does this happen? I'll explain.

  Ironically, the one thing I never wanted to be was a writer. (I didn't want to be a dancer, either, but we'll get to that later). When I was younger, my poor mom did everything she could think of to get me to put a few words down. The tough part for me wasn't coming up with an idea, but the actual process of writing that idea down.

  During this dry point in my writing education, there was one bright spot. And I do mean only one. My mom, who has home schooled her four kids for pretty much forever, had assigned me a personification paragraph. For those of you who might be a little rusty on grade-school lingo, personification means writing as if you are an object that is not normally alive. I was in second or third grade and chose to write a story about silverware.

  It turned out to be really cute, if I do say so myself. Basically, the boy-forks had to convince the girl-spoons to get messy and have some fun in the spaghetti. In turn, the girl-spoons taught the boy-forks to have fun taking a bath in the dishwasher.

  But aside from that, I hadn't written a thing until something wonderful happened...Mrs. Matthews! My mom, getting rather desperate, signed me up for a home school class that met once a week. During the school year, we went through WriteShop I (an excellent curriculum that I highly recommend). I'm not sure exactly how she did it (experts must have their secrets) but Mrs. Matthews helped me stop being afraid of writing and learn to love it. Somehow, she unlocked the creativity and love for words that God had already put inside of me. After I took WriteShop II with her, I had decided I was a born novelist.

Ok, so now you know the basics on how I came to love to write in the first place. But how did the book happen? Well, that's a whole other story...so just stay tuned!