Traveling, Traveling

Today’s question from YA Highway: What has your writing road trip looked like so far? Excitement? Traffic Jams and detours? Where are you going next?

Ever since I fell in love with reading in the third grade, I’ve been writing stories as well. So in that sense, my writing journey starts at age eight or so. More realistically, it starts in eighth grade, at the age of fourteen. That’s when I started writing the novel I’m still working on, now called The Rose of Coracus. The journey was easy and fruitful the summer between middle school and high school. I traveled through lush rainforest with brilliant flowers. There were rainbows and magical creatures. It was a spectacular and invigorating journey. It continued through high school where there were the occasional trees and flowers as I worked with writing buddies, but nothing as successful as that first summer. In college, I took a detour into a desert; there were the occasional cacti, but not the lush palm trees I wanted. My first three years of college I was writing the wrong thing, although not by choice. Luckily, senior year returned me to where I belong. The rain forest bloomed again and was full of animal life: monkeys screeching, brightly colored birds flapping among the canopies. It was a great place to be, and I continued there for the first post-college year, writing and revising as much as I could. Last summer I hit a detour: querying two agents unsuccessfully. I realized that I needed to return to my writing jungle, but the rest of the summer was a barren road, waiting on critique partners’ feedback. As we move into fall and winter, I suspect that I’ll continue on this empty road as my job, moving, and the holidays cut into my writing time. But in the spring…I can’t wait for it! I’ll be writing until the jungle is as lush with flora and fauna as can be!

So there’s my writer’s journey; it’s been a long one, but full of wonderful scenery! I can’t wait to see where the next turn in the road takes me!