Why writing is so important to me. Part 1 of a hell of a lot.

Sorry, i missed yesterday's post. My mum got home from work and i'd lost track of time.

Anyways, writing is definetely one of my passions, so don't expect this to be a single post. :D

It's funny that i love writing things so much, because i don't actually read any novels. I used to ages ago but now i don't really know how to find something that would interest me. One author i found really motivated me was Eoin Colfer. You may not know his name but he wrote the Artemis Fowl books among many others. He's so great because he takes his reader seriously and although i assume his target audience is children and teens, he never underestimates their ability to grasp the outlandish themes throughout some of his books. If you haven't read some of his stuff, definetely check out The Supernaturalist and The Wishlist, and of course the Artemis Fowl books, no matter how old you are. You'll see what i mean.

But the person who truly made me for the first time even consider writing as a 'thing', was my english teacher at school. Let's call her OC. Anyway, for one of the tasks we had to do to pass we had to write a couple of creative pieces that would be assessed by her, in the 2 terms we had her. In the first term, i kind of ran out of time and the story i was writing about a cat that took over the world kind of slipped from my hands. I didn't really have a direction for it. I realised it was a much to ambitious task for me to take on, but i still handed it in with the dreadful "to be continued" at the end. She gave me a a B, a B, and a C or something, along with comments about how i needed to fix up my paragraphs and punctuation. I lost those pages. I can't remember.

However, in the next term, i started writing the rest with a much smaller goal in my mind.

(That's a lesson for all those aspiring writers out there. You HAVE to start small. Take it from me.)

The second installment was much better. I can honestly say that. :D It had everything i wanted in it that i would have put into the bigger story, but it really didn't need any more length. Through a series of events the cat changed his mind about taking over the world and settled into a home with his elderly neighbour and her cat. Awww...

I kept the book because it meant a lot to me, and i will tell you what she wrote in a minute because something else happened to me before OC returned it to me.

For every friday at school, during the last period, we would go to the library and just read whatever we wanted. I was half-reading half-chatting to my friends lol, when my english teacher came in and walked over to me saying she wanted to have a talk with me...

Give me a minute while i fetch my diary cos i wrote down what she said so i would never forget it...

Here it is. Friday 22nd of June 2007.

And this is a direct quote from my diary.

"She said she wanted to apologise, because she had underestimated me. It was because of my cats story. She gave me a triple A+ and said she would talk to Moleman..."

LOL. That's what i used to call the library manager cos he talks like the dude off the Simpsons. Oh geez that's LOL. Anyway...

"because he knows a lot of publishers, and because she thinks i should publish my story because i have a gift."

And that was directly from my diary. In my english book, which i got back later, down the bottom it says...

"AAA Brilliant work. Type up a copy in double spacing and send it to a children's publisher. This is red hot!"

And it was those moments that changed my life. My english teacher changed my life. She has set me on a determined path to write and publish stories, because she believed in me, and i don't think anyone had ever believed in me before. That was definetely one of the nicest things i have ever heard. And OC has never been anything other than brutally honest. If she sees crap, she'll say it's crap. If she sees something she likes, she'll let you know.

So there. I constantly consider myself unlucky in life because of many things i have to deal with, but i have at least one person i truly consider myself lucky for having met.

After that, i started working on my UNIVERSES story. The currently 160,000 word story, which i have been working for what seems like an eternity now, although it's actually about a year and a half. But that will have to wait until another time.

Anyway, if you've read this whole thing, WOW! I don't think even i would have the patience to sit through me rambling on like that. I really should shut up now so you can go look at something interesting! :D

Leave a comment. Send an e-mail. Link to me. Do whatever the hell you want really.

Either tonight or tomorrow i will try to post again, about something different perhaps.

Have a good week.


And before i forget, no, i still haven't published the story. I may need to illustrate it and i have no idea about how you get things published. Any ideas?