‘The Winds Howled . . .’

I will never forget the first real sentence I ever wrote as a writer. I was sixteen. I had finished school. I had deferred my university degree (Computer Science – ostensibly following in my father’s footsteps, though what I really wanted was to make video games). And I was bored. I’d read everything on my parents’ bookshelf, I’d beaten all of my games, I was getting sick of daytime television, and I didn't have a job. The choice before me was clear: I could either walk down to the library or write my own book. How hard could it be, right?

I started out doing everything wrong. No plan. I built my world on the fly. I changed perspectives like an out of work teenager flicks through television channels. I dug plot holes and dutifully threw canvas over them and covered them with leaves. At one point someone ‘in the know’ suggested I trim the number of P.O.V.’s down from forty-five. To two. I was devastated, but I kept going. I enrolled in a BA, majoring in English (no Creative writing degrees at the time). I learned. I chipped away at that MS for years until it was finished. 

Finally, a little over five years later, I was ready. I abandoned it and started again. Quillblade is my second novel, but I’ll never forget my first MS, languishing in the digital equivalent of my bottom drawer, begun all those years ago on the day I decided to become a writer.