Sunday, October 11, 2009

Mirrors and Magic Frogs: the Beginning

Who am I?

I'll begin this blog by saying something I never say out loud to people I meet: I'm a writer. Why don't I tell people? Because inevitably people ask, "Are you published?"


The short answer is no, I'm not. That leads to either more questions or uncomfortable silences or well-meaning but utterly unhelpful suggestions or...that look. You know, the one where the person gets this smirk on his face and you know he's holding back the "you're deluding yourself" comment just to be nice. I guess it never occurred to him that an amateur writer is already aware of how tough it is to break into the publishing industry. She could have, you know, actually researched it and might know a bit more about it than the average layperson. Because that would make sense. (Incidentally, this is the part of the blog where you learn a bit more about my personality--I tend to err on the side of sarcasm. Who would have guessed?)


So no. I haven't been published.


At any rate, the long answer is I'm working on it. I'm a member of the Society for Children's Book Writer's and Illustrators (SCBWI.) I've been to writer's conferences on scholarship and gotten some positive feedback from editors. I'm not actively trying to publish my work at the moment because I know my writing is not yet at the level it needs to reach before I seriously pursue publication or representation by an agent. Rome wasn't built in a day. I'm guessing no one out there can tell me how long it actually did take, since cities grow and decay and grow some more. Writing is sort of like that.


What do I write?


Children's fiction. I've dabbled in many genres, but fantasy draws me in like a fire on a cold night. There's just something so comforting about it. I love being able to create the entire world where my characters exist, of throwing things that have a more modern flair into a world with a more medieval flavor to it. In a work of fantasy, characters can do anything and be anything, the lines between good and bad are usually quite clear, and good traditionally triumphs over evil. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where that always happens? Obviously, we don't. So I write about worlds with magic frogs and mirrors that reflect more than just surface images.


I had envisioned my first post being a tad longer, but I have to go defrost an old freezer now (which, btw, do not exist in any of my fantasy realms.)

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