Where Stories Come From

Ever since I was little, I have loved words.  As soon as I could hold a pencil, I would scribble lines across the paper and tell my parents it was a story.  I made my own "books" with paper and a stapler, and wrote little horse stories. 

My drawing and handwriting skills have not gotten much better.

My first actual (if I can call a few thousand words with a plot and chapters actual) book was Dark Days in the Goat Pasture, and ended up being around ten chapters long.  It followed a baby goat as she travels to the far side of the pasture to rescue her siblings who were held ransom (for all the goat feed) (yes, really).

The hero of the story: Petal. 

I then progressed to writing stories about me and my friends.  Mostly horse stories with my dear friend Sarah Rodecker. I began to fill countless notebooks and word documents with half-written stories of my own making.  I would spend so much time pouring over the characters and plotting out the whole story, and then I would write a chapter or two and get stuck.  So I would start over.  And over.  And over.

Then, in 2015, my best friend and I started The Order of the Pen, a writing group focusing on helping young Christian writers.  After talking with the other members, I decided put a stop to every current story, and, with their help and support, started a quest to find my "Process" and "The One."

Using those unfinished drafts and ideas as test dummies, I tried different methods of outlining/not outlining.  Turns out, I'm a Plantster (panster + plotter).

With that in mind, I began to look for a story to start writing.

I wrote what I thought would be yet another story I would never finish and then eventually dump.  Instead, I went on to write the complete book - as well as a sequel!!  By early 2016, my story had begun to grow (drastically) and a third book was needed (or else all the characters would be left hanging on cliffs)(not literally).  So the Betrayal and Bravery trilogy was born.

To date, these are in the editing process. 

Typos, new names, and utter chaos.

Seems like I'll never be done (and that the characters continue to misbehave and uncover even more secrets that require even more rewrites and then they demand name changes and history changes and appearance changes...) but I enjoy it, for the most part.  It's just the next stage in the writing journey.

So what started you on your writing journey?  Are you in the depths of editing, or are you still first drafting?