Ever since last week's fiction class, my brain has been swirling with the possibilities that writers have in this world and the opportunities I have to become a better one. I've just registered for the Midwest Writers Workshop at Ball State University at the end of July and signed up to for a subscription to Poets and Writers magazine. I also plan on joining the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) as soon as the financial burdens of paying for my wisdom teeth and workshop accomodations are done. I'm not saying that these things will guarantee growth, but they'll definitely provide motivation for it. They'll also give me a wider range of choices when I'm ready to look for a new job.
For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to write. My first story in the second grade spun a complex and thought-provoking plot involving two friends and their quest to quench their thirst for...CANDY! During the height of my horror-flick obsession, I penned two scary stories, even casting my friends as the characters for one of them. My fiction "masterpiece" was written when I was a teenager - the ultimate baby's mama drama. I remember coming home and holing up in my room for hours, blasting my cassette tapes while I wrote in the notebooks I was supposed to be using for school. Passion is so easy to sustain when you're a child. You don't know what it means yet to make excuses. What you want to do, you do.
When I think about having children of my own someday, I want most for them to find their own special talent, their own passion, and run with it, whether it's writing, dance, art, stamp collecting, whatever. And I want to help them do that. What good is having higher education and a good-paying job if you can't help your kids make their dreams come true? My parents did that for me - they read my stories, attended my contests, and gave me the confidence to keep pursuing what I loved. It's the least I can do for my own.
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