What started you on the path to pursuing your writing dream? Did it start when you were a child? Develop from an obsessive love of reading? Have you always pursued it or did you stumble, lose you way, and find your dream again?
I think these all apply to me. Since I was very young I have loved books. I remember trips to the library, the quiet peacefulness, that smell only a library has, and those endless rows of adventures lined up neatly, just waiting for me to discover them.
I was going to write. Someday it would be my adventures on those shelves, but I lost my way. The dream faded and languished in my subconscious along about the time of high school. It resurfaced off and on over the years, mainly in conversations of what we had wanted to be when we grew up. The odds were too great, the time wasn't available, and the competition much too good to overcome.
Life gives us second chances. It may not seem so at the time, it may not come in the way you think or want it to. It may be disguised as a job layoff, or that birthday you were dreading. Be sure to recognize it when it happens. Take a moment to evaluate where you are and what your doing.
I did. I found a website called Helium.com, http://www.helium.com/.
Its a freelance writers website and completely free to join. You earn stars based on your writing and rating of other's work. You would be surprised at how much those stars begin to mean to you. They are every bit as exciting as when you earned them in grade school. Helium offers a marketplace to write articles for publishers and they pay via paypal. They also have a forum that discusses every topic under the sun.
This was my jump start. It was exactly what I needed to gain confidence and the ambition to pursue my dream again. This is not an advertisement for them. I don't go back as often as I should, I'm too busy at this point. But I have to give credit to this website for giving me my chance at a new beginning.
I was lost but now am found.
The writing bug has been with me for as long as I can remember. However, it hoovered in dark closets, relegating itself to obscure binders of loose pages containing a myriad of thoughts and random regurgitation of feelings through out middle and highschool. It went into remission for a few years, but it was around age 25 that the bug bit me. It infected me, and it has been deemed to have caused lifelong lasting effects. That was 8 years ago, and the infection continues to spread. I hope it never stops.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up reading was a huge part of my life. My parents read to me, and I read to myself. Libraries and bookstores became some of my favorite places to be. I'd make up games and had imaginary friends, wrote some poetry and few stories, then when I learned to touch-type on the computer more things tumbled out of me. Now I can't imagine not having writing and reading as a part of my life!
ReplyDeleteYou inspired me to post about the same thing. The beginning is important. For me, it was seeds that were planted in my childhood. My mom read Nancy Drew to us all the time. I eventually started reading all sorts of other books. I found myself making up stories and poems and what not. Like you, years later I found Associated Content and started writing for them online. Now I'm writing other articles, short stories and working on some novel ideas and a screenplay.
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