So, why am I doing this?

Baa-aa-aaaa-aaa.

Well everyone else is, so if I am playing follow the leader, I guess that makes me a sheep!?

No really, the world of writing and publishing seems to be changing so much lately. I have been reading blogs of writers for a while. I find that I really like being able to read what their thoughts are and I have enjoyed reading the reviews done my many book bloggers.

I do not presume to think that many people really care what I have to say. So I guess I am doing it for my own gratification too.

On another note, I hope I can go back and change the blog title later, because what seems awfully witty right now, might just seem awful later.

But really, why am I doing this?

For one thing, I would like post about books I read, joining the book blogging community.
For two things (ha ha), I thought it might be fun to share and explore my writing process here. I find it fascinating to learn how other writers write.

I started writing poetry around the age of eleven. For eleven, I was pretty good I think, though reading some of them now they seem so very simplistic. I guess even if you think the sky is falling, at eleven, things might be a little more simple than they feel. (Or in my case, maybe not - but that is a story I'm not ready to toss out on a blog).

Somewhere around Junior High, I wrote my first short story. I was severly proud of my accomplishment and I am surprised I didn't have it memorized because I ready it over and over again. Around that time, I also spent quite a bit of time drawing, mainly cartoon characters I had created. I thought I was pretty good at that too; I generally recevied a lot of praise from my family and friends for both the poems and the art. I was not nearly as conceited as it may sound when I tell all this, though my mom tells some stories that might make you not believe me. Ha! (If she ever reads this someday, she will be laughing - sorry for throwing out an inside joke like that, it was too good to pass up!)

Anyway, so I saw my dad around that time, he had been living in Maine, (though if he had lived closer, I probably would not have seen him much more frequently), and had come to Texas for a visit. He read the short story of which I was so proud and pretty much told me it was crap and I should stick to the cartoons.

That totally messed me up for a while. I loved to read even then and would devour four or five novels a week by high school. I had decided that, since there was no way to follow all the interesting career paths out there, (and specifically because I learned that to join the FBI you should study accounting... ACCOUNTING! - I wanted to be a profiler and it was before all these CSI and Criminal Minds type shows came out), I would be a writer.  Writing would let me live out all the dreams of all those careers through my characters.

Well, according to Dad, my writing sucked...  Next?

Fast forward twenty years. Now I work in a job where I read, edit and sometimes write reports. I craft emails to clients on a regular basis. I seem to do pretty good at it and catch on to the style needed without too much pain and suffering. Maybe I can write?

In that time, I have started and tossed numerous stories which I had planned to be novels. I have read blogs, books and everything I could find to devour on the topic of publishing and writing. But with a more than full time job, a family and some selfish time spent just doing stuff that's fun, I have never made myself sit down and really focus. I want to write a novel, but I just haven't done it.

So, I took a weeks vacation and I am here at home giving it a go! I thought I would start my little writer's blog here, at the beginning.

I'm writing, and I hope I am doing it right!