When dreams become reality: penning my first formally published work
I remember when I was struck with the unshakable urge to storytell.
I was sitting at the dining room table looking over my kindle, trying and probably failing not to be scandalized at the fiction I was devouring. I finally gotten to the juicy part and it was a battle to not do a spit take with my coffee.
In that moment I was in love with the story, in love with the characters, in love with love and I wanted more. The want became a need as I began to beta for my favorite authors. Then I wrote my first story and posted it on fanfiction.net.
It was horrible.
Just awful. LOL, downright beat-with-the-ugly-stick bad.
Riddled with typos and filled with stilted conversations, I cringe any time I revisit it. The story was okay but my basic writing skills were just that, basic af.
And as much as I'm embarrassed by it I left it there as a reminder. I could have stayed the same, unchanged, stagnated. I could convinced myself to stop writing while I was ahead because I was clearly not very good at it.
But for the first time in a long time I was driven to be very good at something. I wanted to write a story that made readers feel what I felt when I read swooning tales of love. I wanted to write characters that they could relate to because they looked like them or had similar experiences. And not just one story but as many as I could each as sweet and spicy as the one beside it but unique as a fingerprint. That's what I desired, to leave an impression just like a fingerprint.
So I plodded along with one fanfic after the other until I started to see that I was getting better. There were less typos, an easier flow to the paragraphs. My notorious run-ons weren't as glaring. My dream was coming true because I was working hard to achieve it and faith had seen it through.
Publishing an actual ebook though of my own characters seemed like a pipe part of my dream. And for a while it was but I hadn't counted on Zena Wynn offering me as much as she has. It is great to be one of her trusted betas and even sweeter to have her friendship but nothing could prepare me for the joy I had in her proposal to help me learn to publish a book by writing alongside her! I might have screamed and danced for a maybe five minutes. I couldn't believe it.
Seriously, there I was six years ago a new mother dealing with postpartum depression and other issues that feed that beast, now writing with one of my all-time favorites on something that I thought would pan out to be nothing more than a hobby.
And I hope it doesn't pan out that way. I'm still writing and have 'books' in the works but I'll need your help. I promise you, the reader, that I will do my very best each time I put a book up for submission. I promise to make characters that pull at emotions, make you love, lust and angry on their account. I promise to do my best in writing compelling and unique plots. I promise you this.
I hope it is enough to make you a loyal and happy reader :)
Live long and prosper, Space cowboy
Kioni Hall
I was sitting at the dining room table looking over my kindle, trying and probably failing not to be scandalized at the fiction I was devouring. I finally gotten to the juicy part and it was a battle to not do a spit take with my coffee.
In that moment I was in love with the story, in love with the characters, in love with love and I wanted more. The want became a need as I began to beta for my favorite authors. Then I wrote my first story and posted it on fanfiction.net.
It was horrible.
Just awful. LOL, downright beat-with-the-ugly-stick bad.
Riddled with typos and filled with stilted conversations, I cringe any time I revisit it. The story was okay but my basic writing skills were just that, basic af.
And as much as I'm embarrassed by it I left it there as a reminder. I could have stayed the same, unchanged, stagnated. I could convinced myself to stop writing while I was ahead because I was clearly not very good at it.
But for the first time in a long time I was driven to be very good at something. I wanted to write a story that made readers feel what I felt when I read swooning tales of love. I wanted to write characters that they could relate to because they looked like them or had similar experiences. And not just one story but as many as I could each as sweet and spicy as the one beside it but unique as a fingerprint. That's what I desired, to leave an impression just like a fingerprint.
So I plodded along with one fanfic after the other until I started to see that I was getting better. There were less typos, an easier flow to the paragraphs. My notorious run-ons weren't as glaring. My dream was coming true because I was working hard to achieve it and faith had seen it through.
Publishing an actual ebook though of my own characters seemed like a pipe part of my dream. And for a while it was but I hadn't counted on Zena Wynn offering me as much as she has. It is great to be one of her trusted betas and even sweeter to have her friendship but nothing could prepare me for the joy I had in her proposal to help me learn to publish a book by writing alongside her! I might have screamed and danced for a maybe five minutes. I couldn't believe it.
Seriously, there I was six years ago a new mother dealing with postpartum depression and other issues that feed that beast, now writing with one of my all-time favorites on something that I thought would pan out to be nothing more than a hobby.
And I hope it doesn't pan out that way. I'm still writing and have 'books' in the works but I'll need your help. I promise you, the reader, that I will do my very best each time I put a book up for submission. I promise to make characters that pull at emotions, make you love, lust and angry on their account. I promise to do my best in writing compelling and unique plots. I promise you this.
I hope it is enough to make you a loyal and happy reader :)
Live long and prosper, Space cowboy
Kioni Hall
Comments
Post a Comment