The girl who can’t write is writing a book
[Liz]
When I was in ninth grade we got the most awesome summer assignment ever – read three books and write reports about them. Now, while this would not excite the normal kid, I was over the moon. I mean the book list we got had the Hobbit on it! C’mon the chance to read one of my favourite books for the billionth time and then write a report on what I thought about it?! Who would not want to spend their summer doing that?
At the start of tenth grade, after handing in our assignments for the summer, we received them back the next week and the teacher was /pissed/. Everyone had copied their reports from the internet except one person… My face lit up, I was the good kid, how cool was I to write those reports? I kicked those book reports asses, I won!
“And I only know they didn’t copy their reports from the internet, because they were written so badly.” – Sayeth my first HS English teacher who shall remain nameless.
And that was the start of my professional writing career. For the last three years of HS I tried to impress my English teachers and I mean tried hard. I went to an international school, which means that we were all dorks who studied and tried hard (by public school standards at least), but when I wasn’t slaying dragons online or drooling over my high school sweetheart I was trying desperately to be a ‘good writer’.
I finally realized I was not a ‘good writer’ in 12th grade when our new English teacher, the one considered the ‘cool’ friendly guy, was giving back our creative writing assignments and he handed one paper to my classmate who hated English and said, “When writing some of us apply a scalpel, finely plying our words to create a masterpieces and other of us… have a sledgehammer.” My assignment was then plopped on my desk.
What was I doing wrong? When I RPed on neopets.com I was always allowed on the literate forms, I was even banned for a few days for my really cool use of metaphors! Ugh, I was never going to be a writer.
It wasn’t till I reached University that I ever dreamed that I would be able to write something that meant anything to anyone aside for me. I kept role playing throughout cause that was fun, but I never really shook the idea that I could not write. However, during one of my poetry classes my possibly favorite professor of all time saw something in my work. Before I knew it she had helped me publish my poems and my dream of writing had its Renaissance.
I had no idea what I was going to do with all my creative gumption, but at least I could write my semi-saucy fiction with confidence now.
Later in my University career I met the ladies who I consider to be my best friends today. I met them through the greatest hobby on earth – role play and we became very close friends. These ladies always believed in what I wrote, even when I sent them pieces for their characters at 4am in the morning and every fifth word had a typo. Each time I sent something I got a yay or a thanks omg I luv ittttttt <3 back. However, I think the best thank you I ever got was when one of these ladies recommended me to a contact she knew who wrote for Wizards of the Coast’s Living Forgotten Realms. She told her contact I could write and suggested I should write for them.
Now with having written my share of adventures for another company, I am finally ready to publish my own works and stories. I can’t wait to share them with others and I hope you love them as much as I do.
I guess the moral of this story is don’t let others who shouldn’t not really matter in your life get you down. Listen to the people who love you and if you want to write a friggen book about cool friggen people who do cool magical shit while fighting with their own cool soap-opera level drama you go do it!
