Introduction Time

Hi, I’m Kristen.  I’m in my mid-twenties.  I have a BA in Anthropology.  I live in Washington - the state, not D.C. I'm in the process of writing my first novel. What else am I supposed to say?  I have three cats – Daisy, Monkey and Weasley.  I’m a self-proclaimed cat lady.  Well, maybe that’s too much sharing now.

This is my first adult blog.  I say 'adult blog' because I used to obsessively LiveJournal when I was younger.  I would post my teenage angst and go on about my then current obsessions ad nauseum.  I would also post my fan-fictions. I loved writing.  I’d write fan-fiction about Harry Potter, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Peter Pan, Lost, anything that I was interested in.  I rediscovered my writing LiveJournal recently and my early writing was very dark. Everyone died and the endings were always morbid.  It made me cringe seeing how original and edgy I thought it was.  Most of the stories didn't even have a proper ending because I thought it was cool to leave things extremely open-ended.  No, just no.

So, why did I start again now?  Well, I've been slogging through the process of writing my first novel.  I came up with the idea for it about three years ago, but then started a love/hate relationship with it.  During the summers I would get excited about it and develop characters or come up with ideas but when I would go back to college, I would try to avoid it at all costs.  I don’t know why, but I would put up this wall between me and writing and make lots of excuses not to write.  I used to love to write, and now I was telling myself I had other things to do instead, which wasn't completely true. 

I finally decided to just go for it. It has been a huge learning experience.  An experience that I have decided to document in this blog.  The writing process has been teaching me a lot and I hope will continue to teach me a great deal more. I am not someone to give solid advice to anyone on writing, because I’m only just figuring it out for myself.  But, by writing these lessons out, I'm hoping to document my process and if other amateur writers stumble upon my blog, feeling overwhelmed by the writing process as much as I have and still do, maybe they will learn something from my experiences too.

So, feel free to introduce yourself!  When did you first start writing?