Why don't you be the writer, and decide the words I say....

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The time for NaNoWriMo has come around again. I participated last year. It was a very memorable experience; from being on a sugar-high, trying to keep myself awake late into the night to reach my word-count goal, calling up my writing pal to let her know that my whole first chapter was somehow deleted and I had to start over, or calling my best friend with a panic attack, fearing for the life of one of the characters in my book, listening to her as she reminded that I was the author and I got to decide whether or not they lived; and the final joy of finishing the 50,000 word novel that was all written by me. Yes, it was definitely an AMAZING experience, and I think every person that aspires/wants to be a writer should try it, at least once.  


I am currently working on editing my NaNoWriMo                                                            
Novel, which, I have to be honest, is a bit of a chore for me. I talk a lot about reading, but I'm not a big book reader. I'm one of those people that has to be in a "mood" to read a book. And very rarely does that happen. I am also my worst critic, and a bit of a perfectionist. This causes for up to 15 minutes' work on just one sentence, causing me to hate reading my own writing all the more. 

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I probably get the love of writing from my mother. She has always been into writing poems and journaling about her Bible time. Even when it comes down to writing a recipe on a card for a friend, she throughly enjoys it. It's not really worth asking where I got my love/hate relationship for reading from. Most of my family are avid readers, and for all I know, none of them share the same feelings for it as I do. But I have always loved writing. I don't remember exactly what age it started at. I think it was when I was finally old enough to figure out how to type something up on our old, huge computer. I think it started out just as simple as re-typing out of a children's story book, and playing "post office" with my younger siblings and writing pretend letters to Jane or Joe or Amanda, whomever the other was pretending to be at the time. Pen-pals were a must as well.

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*Taking a deep breath*

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All of this to say that as I was cleaning out all the junk from under my bed, I discovered grocery bags, shoeboxes, and stacks of random school tablets, some of them completely filled, some of them with only a few pages filled, full of stories, poems, and fun sentences that had never been fully finished. I mean, come on, The Ray Story, a story about a cowboy-sherrif in the 1800's that helps "clean up" the the town he just moved to, while spreading the Gospel of Christ; 

Me, working on "The Ray Story" in a hotel on vacation
in Colorado Springs in 2009

Stanley, the Little Blue Bird, an intended Christian Children's story series about a little blue bird named Stanley (Hence the title), with his little sister Cindy, and unknown friends (Unknown, because I never did get far enough into that series to give poor Stanley any friends. Poor bird, just stuck in the book with his sister and mother), having adventures and solving mysteries in their forrest. Then, my very first piece of work, The Missing Box (I know, I know, I was so creative with the title), a story using my childhood friends in the story, revealing an exciting tale (Well, it was exciting at the age of 9 or 10, anyways) of good friends on a hunt for "The Missing Box", holding their friendship treasures and supposedly secret paper. That is also an unfinished story. :(


There are so many more stories that I know are tucked away somewhere under my bed or in a trunk; so many more in a folder on my laptop, and a few others yet that were lost many years ago when our computer crashed. And yet, I haven't stopped writing. There are so many poems, so many songs, so many children's series' that have yet to be written. I thought that it was ironic, funny, and yet appropriate, that I find all of these stories and musings that I had written over the years, on the first day of National Novel Writing Month. And so, I share this originally-going-to-be-a-short-story with you, fellow writers and readers, because I thought that it was just too good to keep to myself.  


Why don't you be the artist, 
and make me out of clay,
Why don't you be the writer,
and decide the words I say,
'Cause I'd rather pretend, 
I'll still be there at the end,
Only it's too hard to ask,
Won't you try to help me. 
~Ellie Goulding~


~Written with love 
                by Emmi~