So many words often float in my head. I was always going to be a writer since it has always been apart of me. I wrote my first story for my grandparents when I was 9 years old about three mermaid sisters. It was seven pages, seven chapters. Throughout my teens I was determined to be published as a poet, with out succeeding except only through the school yearbook and my religions newsletter. I then went to university still wanting to be a poet. A teacher forced me to realize I was not as sorrowful or as strong with my words as others like him by giving me a rotten grade. So I tried writing fiction but again a different teacher thought I sucked. The nice thing about the first year writing program at University of Victoria was that we had to do all three genres: poetry, fiction and play writing. Before I gave up on writing all together I had my last genre, playwriting. The last play I had written for my grade 12 class got an F since I was not interested in it at all.
Some how I had sparked the teacher’s interest and I got one of the best grades in that class. So my writing journey at the university was planned for me. I took classes on play writing and wrote many different plays. I studied film as well and thought this was something I wanted to pursue for a career. During my 4th year at the university I decided to direct and produce my own play. I wanted to test the waters of the theater world. I got friends to act, who were not actors and had support from many other friends to get the play performed at the university. It showed for 2 nights, and we made just enough money to break even and to have a great after party. I was extremely stressed during the whole production since I did not know how to delegate well and thought I needed to do it all. I realized after the experience what I could have done to make it not as stressful if I had only the courage to say I needed help.
I was just about to finish my university life with two paths of writing lifestyles that I could do without a clue of which one was right. So I decided to ask for help. I always wanted to write children books even before I started university. Throughout my university life I was very active in my religion. We had a youth council that was formed with a collection of 12 people under 25 from all over the world. I joined the council for 5 years as the newsletter editor. My job as editor was to encourage children and youth from 5-25 to write or do some sort of artistic creation for the newsletter that got sent out to more than 10,000 people all over the world. I taught workshops at seminars that were based on how to bring out spirit in their creative works. Working with children made me want to write for them.
And yet I had also studied plays and films during school so I had the world of entertainment to pursue. I decided that I would ask one of teachers, who was a published children book writer if he would be willing to be my mentor ( or more like if he would be interested in reading my story.) I thought if he said no then that meant I would go on the other path. It was an easy choice. He said sure.
It was not an easy choice. I got a job as a barista for Starbucks after I got my university fine arts degree since I realized I needed to make money while I wrote the best book ever. The first 4 months that I started on this career as a writer I tried to work on that important story but had the worst writers block. I was too overwhelmed by all that I wanted to do with the story. And to make matters worse I had a whole other story itching to come out. In the end I decided to let go of the first one and followed the second story’s journey.
I had a friend from school working at a children book publisher. I asked her if she would be willing to read the book. She said sure. She was not an editor then but she was willing to try. She ended up taking classes on becoming an editor and used my manuscript as her first book to edit as she learned to become one. She still works at that publishing company and is now an editor. She told me the story was sweet but she wasn’t sure if her company would want to publish it. I continued to work on my manuscript after I had her look at it the last time.