Life is funny. I find it strange after a long break (long meaning years). I would find myself blogging again. I’ve never stopped writing since I started in mid 2014. I never thought I’d write stories. I was a musician not a person adept at using words convey feeling.

To say read a lot would have been a misnomer. I grew up addicted to the printed word. If there was a book it was in my hands. For several reasons, but mainly I grew up before the internet was mainstream, before cell phones, and seat belts in the back of cars. In rural America there were no trips to mall. Where I grew up the mall was at least an hour away. Even if I stayed in the city with my Mom we never went anyway. So the local libraries and the school library were my hangouts.

I found refuge in the worlds books could offer me so I devoured anything I could get my hands on. Although, many of the books in my mother’s library were questionable for an impressionable child.

I loved to read but that didn’t mean I just picked up a pencil and started writing. I had to be pushed, cajoled, and blackmailed to write. Well, at least write actual stories. I’ve been a music teacher and a software engineer, I knew how to write music and software requirement specifications. I was terrific at writing a knitting tutorial or how-to article. Technical writing was easy for me.

But back to the blackmail, I was reading a lot of fan-fiction. Yes, this music teacher/software engineer is an avid gamer and loves rpgs. I found fan-fiction and my life felt complete, I could sit, and knit, and read. Fan-fiction is genre that either people love or hate. I found it rounded out my reading and I could encourage writers to continue writing. I considered this a win-win. I help encourage others and get my reading fix .I loved the idea of tying up the stories arcs they leave unfinished in the games.

Okay, seriously this time I will explain the blackmail. I had become friends with fan-fiction author. I commented on her stories and she wrote me back and a friendship blossomed. We started chatting daily. She would bounce ideas off me and I’d offer a few of my own.

One black day, we were chatting and she left me completely gob-smacked. “Lady V, you know that Mass Effect story you love so much?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“I’m not writing another chapter until you write something and publish it on the fan-fiction site.”

“What? Are you kidding?”

“Nope… guess you better get on that.”

So it took me a few days of debating but I wrote a terrible one-shot. It was truly bad. I tried to avoid writing dialogue because, honestly I didn’t know how to write it. My face is still burning remembering how awful it was. My friend thought it was great, well she said , I had great ideas but I didn’t know how to write dialogue. Fair enough.

After that complete embarrassment, I was hooked. My mind was so full of ideas that she took me under her wing, Showed me what I was doing wrong, how to fix it, and how to work on being a better writer.

Fast forward six years later, we are still friends and we still talk every day. She still is writing and so am I.