How It All Began

When I first started writing, it was back in my college years. I was a sophomore in college. Sometimes during classes I would doodle little things here and there. But one day, I wrote a poem. I wish I knew where this poem was, because it was so awesome. It was dark and mysterious, about a girl that touches a rose and her soul turns dark, cursed until someone comes along and breaks it. From this poem, I was inspired to write about this girl. And from it I spent nearly 8 years creating this story about a girl that becomes cursed by a black rose. It was never perfect. I wrote and and wrote. I went over SEVERAL revisions. It was never good enough and I could never stop fixing it. I'm not entirely sure how many different versions of this story I went through. Of course, I had several other projects during this time that I started and never finished. I always returned to this story though, determined to make it perfect. But finally one day I told myself I needed to move on to something else.

 

So I did.

 

And this new story came to me out of nowhere and it practically seemed to write itself. And I realized, that the book I spent all those years working on, that was me figure out how to do this. How to plot, how to outline, how to write out this story, how to find my voice. When I finished The Pawn's Heart, I still had those feelings, thinking it's not perfect, and tempted to go over it again and again. But it was easier this time to stop myself from that. Writing will never be 100 percent perfect. A story can always be better. But what's important isn't how perfect it can be, because writers aren't perfect. What's important is the story you create. I poured my heart and soul into this book. It is little pieces of me and my life. It's not supposed to be perfect.

 

Maybe there ARE perfect authors out there. But I'm not one of them. Regardless of that, I hope when you read my story, you see the imperfect beauty in it.

Question for the writers out there. What are some challenges you face when writing? How do you overcome them? Leave your thoughts in the comments!