You wake up in the middle of the night, your heart pounding, your sheets sticking to you. You sit up and wonder, what am I doing with my life? A glance at the clock tells you the world is blissfully asleep, dreaming of rainbows and annoying little sheep while you sit there staring into the darkness hoping it somehow holds the answers. But the answers to what?…

Sound relatable? You’re not alone. That was how my journey into writing started years ago. I was a recent college grad filled with hope and possibilities. I had just earned a degree and dreamed of the opportunities that awaited me each time I sent out my resume. As days turned to months and the job search continued, the glint in my eye dulled. I no longer had the luxury of time. I had to find a job – anything to pay the bills. I took the first thing that came to me, a job at a medical office filing paperwork. It wasn’t so bad, at least it was in the health sciences field I studied in. But it drained me. It drained my energy, my ambition, and my time.

It took everything I had to get up in the morning and drag myself to work. By the end of the day, all I wanted was to collapse on the couch and lose myself in whatever I was binge watching that week. This cycle continued for years. Was it my own fault? Absolutely. But I can’t blame myself entirely. I was in a serious slump and I didn’t have the energy to get out of it.

But then I had a conversation with my husband that forever changed my path. Out of frustration, I told him how badly I wished we could just escape our lives and move into a cabin in the woods where I could spend my days writing. It’s a cliche sure, but it was a dream I’ve held close to my heart ever since I was a kid. I never thought it was truly possible, I’d always assumed it was exactly that…a dream. That is, until my husband asked why I didn’t just go for it? I spouted the usual reasons: we needed money, there was no time, I had no idea how to write. For every argument he had a counter argument: do it on your own time to start, if you have time to binge watch an entire series then you have time to throw some words on a page a couple nights a week, what have you got to lose?

He was right. And the more I talked to him about it, the more I remembered how much I loved writing when I was younger. So much so, that I chose “books” as my fourth grade speech topic *cringe*. That love of story followed me to high school where I used to write personalized love stories featuring my friends and their crushes. It turned out I had such a knack for it that I was writing about one a week as the requests continued to roll in. Sadly, as it always tends to do, life got in the way and I stopped writing to focus on more important things…like being an adult. But now, in my desperation to flee my current situation and just be happy, I picked up the pen again (or rather, the laptop), and gave it a go. My husband and I would talk for hours about different story ideas I’d come up with, so I had plenty to work from. But I fell into a pretty common trap…I re-wrote that first chapter at least 30 times and never moved onto chapter 2.

Something had to change. I needed help. So, I picked up a book I had seen recommended countless times. Stephen King’s On Writing. I devoured it in one sitting and when I was done, I knew what I had to do – fly by the seat of my pants. He proposes that the best place to begin writing your novel is to literally just start writing. So that’s what I did – I just started writing. No plan, no outline, just a vague idea of what I thought might make a good premise. I got past that first chapter, finished the second chapter in record time, and didn’t look back until I had a completed first draft. I was proud. I was an accomplished writer who did something a lot of would be writers only talk about. But then I read it…

It was bad. But I wasn’t discouraged because according to Anne Lamott who talks about “shitty first drafts”, it was supposed to be bad. No problem, I thought, I’ll just revise it into perfection. So, I started the editing process not knowing what I was doing. I cut chapters and characters and rearranged scenes but no matter what I did, nothing felt right. It didn’t have the same feel as the books I read from published authors. I spent the next few years of my life writing and re-writing that book all while working at a job that was slowly eating my soul like a succubus.

Out of desperation, I turned to Dr. Google and found some pretty spectacular websites filled with information on plot structure and character arcs and all of the juicy tidbits that make up a complex and enjoyable read. How had I missed all of this for so long?? As I read through the “rules” of the trade, I realized I innately knew a lot of the basic elements that make up a good story. I had been reading books all my life and devoted far too many hours to tv and movies to openly admit, and somewhere along the way my subconscious must have picked up a thing or two about storytelling. But the intricacies are what set apart a piece of fiction from a page-turning, un-put-down-able story. I realized I had a lot of work to do, and a lot more to learn.

I’ve since spent the last 10 years focusing my energies on absorbing everything I can about structure, style, world-building, character arcs, and the list goes on. I’ve finally emerged on the other side, ready to write new stories and share them with the world. But I’ve also emerged with something unexpected. A desire to help others who are now in the same predicament I was in. Writers who are struggling to find the essence of their story. Writers who aren’t quite sure what’s wrong with that first draft (or second, or tenth), or those who just aren’t sure where to go from here. Now that I know what to look for, and how to fix it, I want to focus my time and energy on helping others do the same. So, welcome to my website, I’m happy you’re here and I hope you stay a while.