~~In which the hopeful maiden regales you with her old tales~~




    Hello again, citizens of The Storyteller's Citadel!
    
    Today I thought I would take you all on a little romp down memory lane. We're going to take a look at my writing journey over the years, from a child all the way to present day. I'll also be sharing unedited snippets of my old projects and commenting on them.  
    I had so much fun crawling into the back of my closet and reaching into dark cupboards to compile this short account for you As I sat amidst the many composition notebooks, dust twirling lazily in the air around me, I could truly see how much I've grown as a writer. It was such a great moment to see my progress like that before me. 
 
    No matter how poorly the excerpts appear, I'm going to attempt not to turn my nose up at them, or ridicule them. My younger self had to write those beginner pieces so I could have the experience that I do today. I want to be grateful to my past self. She started me down this amazing path, and I wouldn't be this far down it without her. Not to mention, I had so much fun writing all my old work! And that's a huge reason why I write to this day. Because I have fun, and because I love it. Even now, the idea of just a few minutes spent excitedly scrawling pencil marks across a page, in chase of the epic climax of a story, is still just the best!  
 
    That being said, as the post progresses and you hopefully see my writing getting better, I also want to note that, if I'm able, I'll be honing this craft for the rest of my life. I'm not perfect at it. I never will be. It's not about a made up destination. It's about a journey. One that I hope never ends. 

    Now then, let us begin!

    
   
     ~~At age eight, I was presented with my very first diary. It was the most precious thing in the world to me. I filled that book's crisp, white pages with everything. Short stories from TV, favorite songs I heard on the radio, horribly misspelled accounts of my day, all made their way in the form of pencil smears into the book. I began to write my very own worship songs, styled after the ones I heard on the radio or that played over and over on our CD collections. And I also wrote one or two mostly original short stories.

    "I love stories: they make me have stories and the stories are so lovely.
When I grow up, I am going to make a book, it'll be lovely." 

    Apparently, I always knew I was going to be a writer. I did not know this, funnily enough. And it appears the word 'lovely' was a favorite of mine.

    
    ~~Moving forward several years, and as part of a new homeschooling schedule I was required to write for an hour every school day, and it could be about whatever I wanted. During those years my love of anything with princesses and castles was infinite.(And it still is) In any case, I selected a bright red composition book and a matching pen, and I wrote about a princess and a castle.
     I was quite proud of that story, though now, I'm afraid, I have no idea where that red notebook is. I also don't remember much about the story. I know it included secret gardens, village friends, oranges, raisin cakes, singing. But that's really all I remember.

    
    ~~Another time jump finds me still writing about princesses and castles. With the help of my siblings, I wrote an entire trilogy, complete with an epilogue. It wasn't very long. But I had created a whole world and a large cast of characters. There were battles and betrayals, rich gowns and elaborate weapons, death and grief. 

Violet lay awake starring into the dark night sky. Around her her friends snored. All was still and peaceful, but Violet worried. She worried about her mom and dad. Were they getting enough to eat? Were they even alive?
No. She must not think like that.
She worried about their mission, which they had decided to embark upon in three days time, to keep the enemy guessing, Josh had said. 
But what if they did all get caught? They'd most likely be thrown in the dungeons or killed as an example.
If so, all hope for the kingdom would be lost.
Only one thing was for sure. They didn't know what was gonna happen 'til they did it.

    So the idea of anxiety and a sleepless night right before a big mission is there. I was just having a bit of a struggle getting my sentences streamlined so they would make sense together as a sequence.

   
    ~~Fast forward again, and I wrote another trilogy. This one much longer and far more intricate than the one before. There were books and motorcycles, cloaks and battles. There was darkness and pain, and there was trauma. Here is where I began to truly mature as a person and as a writer, and awaken to the darkness of the world. As a result, I gravitated towards darker writing to make sense of what I was seeing, but only as long as Hope shone bright in its midst. That was crucial to me. But right as I was winding down on the end of this series, another story called my name, and I answered it. I paused this trilogy literally mid-conversation. But, one day, I hope to return to it. It has the potential to be quite the powerful thing.

Noah looked up and inspected his dull reflection in the mirror. He had pale, blond hair that spiked in a million different directions , and almost never layed flat unless he spent an hour or so slicking it back with hair gel.
His eyes were a grayish blue and had the unfortunate habit of appearing to search you for some unknown secret.

    I remember being really proud of this description. Again, I think the idea is apparent, but I'm having trouble stringing the ideas of each of his characteristics into their separate sentences. Overall, for an unedited piece, this is really good. 

 
   ~~During the time that I was writing this trilogy, I was also brainstorming and tweaking another story idea. Not a ton of writing has been done for this particular project. I've rewritten the beginning three times now and I have a small stack of story notes wedged into the composition book. One of these days I may return to this story, and when I do I'll have a ton of decisions to make. So much is undeveloped. This is an excerpt from my second and favorite rewrite.

Jana plucked the bowl of remaining batter from the counter.
"I'll make the rest of the pancakes and you clean."
"Or," Ben tugged the bowl from her hands. "You clean and I'll make 'em."
"I don't think so. I let you whip up the batter and look what it did to you," She pointed at his front soaked in batter. "The pancake mix is clearly out to get you."
Ben laughed. "But I have this feeling that if you take it from me, it might attack you, too. Plus you're better at cleaning than I am."
"Aww, so you're trying to protect me from the big, bad batter?"
"Yep," Ben lifted his chin proudly"
"Arm wrestle for it?" Challenged Jana. "Loser has to clean?
Ben scoffed. "I'd totally stomp you. Let's do Rock Paper Scissors."
"Translation: I know Jana will beat me in brute strength, so I'm directing her to a game that relies solely on chance."
"Hey, I'm just trying to make it fair for both sides."
Grinning, they both mentally selected one of the three objects.

    Yes. This was a sibling conversations. The pair in question are actually twins. I'm really proud of this dialogue and I don't have many issues with it. It could maybe be cleaned up a word here or there, but mostly I'm satisfied. 


     ~~Now, my friends, we enter into the writing of the last three to four years. My writing journey as of late, has been packed with new ideas and characters and dialogue and for that, I am so grateful and so happy. I have experienced so much growth. It's been fantastic. This summer, it'll mark four years since I started what is my biggest and my (as of now) favorite project ever. I've currently written three books of this story and am working on the fourth now. I think it's set to be somewhere around a five or six book series. I cannot fully express just how happy I am with this story. It's also the one that called me away from that last one. I have no excerpts to share for this one. You'll just have to wait until it's published ;)
    
    
    ~~Recently, I've also returned to songwriting and taken to poetry. Though this is not with the intention of publishing. I just like to do it. When a beautiful phrase appears in my mind, it's such a splendid race to get to my notebook and breathlessly jot it down. It gives me such a thrill. I've started three other stories but have mostly put them on hold in order to focus on the series mentioned in the paragraph above. One of the stories I only wrote a chapter of, but was very happy with the short piece. Here's an excerpt.

He wondered feverishly if some calming music would help him focus. He decided it couldn't make it worse.
Jason reached into his bag for his earbuds and iphone, grateful for the decision to download some songs before getting on the train. He popped the earbuds into his ears and turned up the volume to drown out the droll buzz of conversation by his fellow passengers.
A peaceful piano ballad accompanied by some violins filled his ears. Jason breathed deeply and set himself again to his task.

        In this particular scene my character is a student, worrying over his textbooks. And whether or not there is wi-fi on trains, I'm going to overlook that and focus on the writing. This is just six sentences but I really like all of them. I think the idea of college stress is apparent and I like my descriptions. If you're curious, sadly, the music did not help the poor boy. Oh, I had heaps of fun writing this. So for this excerpt, I have no corrective notes. 

    

    That concludes my writing journey so far! But...that last excerpt I shared is almost three years old. So what would a completely unedited piece of work look like for me today. Well, a few weeks ago, deep in the late of January, we were visited by the Native American "wolf moon", or the January full moon.


 
    I managed to snap a photo, but the picture I got simply does not do it justice. So I'll write a little something about it. 

The moon rose higher than normal that night, pressing its pure light upon the world and shining so brightly that the great wolf's silver coat caught the shimmers and glistened like a sea of stars.
The young bear lowered his head in respect of the King of the Wood and his eyes alighted on a paw print the King had left in the snow.
The bear raised his own, slightly larger paw and hovered it above the place, in awe. Soon to be grown, he was so much bigger than the animal standing atop a ridge before him and yet, there was not a creature in the wood, big or small, who would not bow to the King. The bear's own mother had said so, in winter nights past, sleepily whispering into his ear.
The bear dared to raise his head and just caught the great King raising his head to the glowing moon. An ethereal song slipped from his throat. 
The moon seemed to smile and to enlarge. It caught the song in its ghostly hands and spread it over the land for miles and miles. 
As the music fell, like the snow had nights before, upon the young bear, he felt a sadness and a joy and a longing. All feelings he would never be able to explain or to decipher. 
Around the bear, the world became alive with sweet songs as the moon gathered up the answers from far off lands and presented them before the King, whose howls blended perfectly with all the others.
And so the King welcomed his forest into a new day.
As the last tendrils of music fell, the King lowered his great head in the direction of the bear's hiding place, very briefly. But then, shaking his starry coat about him, he climbed gracefully down from his perch atop the ridge and without a backward glance, disappeared into the winter woods.  
The bear turned once more to look upon the white orb pressed as if a stone in the sky and began to make his way back to his warm den where his mother would be waiting, the glow of the wolf moon lighting his way.     


    Oh, I had so much fun writing that just now! It's not perfect, (I had to fight the urge to edit a few words) but I had fun exercising my creative muscles! 

    
    ~~So now we come to the end of this post. I hope you enjoyed this romp down memory lane, and that it maybe inspired you to keep on with your own writing journey, or perhaps made you feel less alone knowing that you are not the only one with rough manuscripts tucked away in the depths of your closet. Hopefully together we can celebrate every victory and fall that it took to get us this far. I don't know about you, but I can't wait to see where this journey takes me next! 


    With love,
            The Hopeful Maiden.


Remember, Dear Heart, we are all between the paws of the one true Aslan.   
 
      


      
     

     

  

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