A Quick Piece About Me

So I guess the first thing I should mention is my hubby and my kids.  I've been married for 21 years and have 2 of the coolest kids ever.  My oldest (aka Sonny Boy) will be 21 in October and is serving in the United States Navy.  The other one (aka Baby Girl) will start her senior year of high school in the fall and will be co-captain of her high school cheer squad. 

As far as being a writer, I really don't remember a time in my life when I wasn't a writer.  I remember writing my first "story" when I was a little kid.  At the time, it was called talking to my imaginary friends, but I came up with some doozies.  As I grew older, I started writing down these little scenarios and that's when it really became writing per se.  I knew that being a writer was what I really wanted to do by the time I was in the 4th grade.  The assignment was to create an invention using our names.  At that time my last name was Wickwire, so I created a burgler alarm that entailed 100 feet of candle wick and 100 feet of barbed wire.  I got an A on the assignment and never stopped writing from there.

Though I'd spent years working on my writing craft, I never had the chance to go to college for it.  Shortly after high school I met my husband.  I knew he was the man I'd spend the rest of my life with, I just didn't think it would happen as quickly as it did.  Kids came along right after the marriage and money was tight.  Plus, at that time, there was no computer in the home and no Internet.  I did all my writing either long hand with pen and paper, or on my old typewriter.  I used a manual 1950's typewriter and didn't too badly.  I'd learned how to type on a manual in school, so it wasn't a stretch for me to keep using one.  it was when the hubby bought me an electric typewriter that I had to learn all over again.  I was so used to banging on the keys to get the letters/numbers to show up that using the electric typewriter meant all my words came with extra letters.

We finally got our first computer in the early 1990's.  Okay, so it was a Web TV thingy and not really a computer.  But it worked and I got to play with the Internet.  The problem is that we live in an area that doesn't have a "local" Web TV hook up, so getting online meant a long-distance phone call came with the deal.  Didn't take long for the hubby to get me a real computer and we were finally online. 

I spent a lot of time alone with that computer, trying to figure out how to get my writing career going during those early days.  Once I'd found a few online writing sites, it was time to set up my first site.  There was no money to buy myself a domain name, and at that time I didn't even know what that meant.  I did know that people were making money by designing websites so I locked myself in my room and taught myself how to do HTML.  I thought I was so cool!!!  Course, by the time I was ready to start doing sites myself, CSS had come along and I was left in the dust.  I can still put together an old school website, but they're just not as pretty as the ones we see today.

Since then, I've managed to make a name for myself.  No, I'm not one of the most famous of online writers, but I've created a nice little portfolio for myself.  Even if the only ones who ever see it are my family members, I know how hard I've worked to get to the point I am now.  I make a fair living in the writing world, and would probably do a lot better if I really put my mind to it. 

The most important things I've learned about being a writer over the past 10 years are this:

1.) If you want it bad enough, it can be done.
2.) There's more to being a writer than just putting words on the page.

The life of a writer is never boring.  And if it is, then they're not writing the right things.  There have been a lot of ups and downs over the years, but I can honestly say I've never regretted the choice I made in being a writer.  I love what I do.  I love the things I create.  And I love the fact that I never know what I'll be writing next, even when it's just to amuse myself.