Showing posts with label contract. Show all posts
Showing posts with label contract. Show all posts

Friday, February 2, 2018

My sinuous path to writing by J. S. Marlo





Many people I meet are curious to know how I became a writer, but I’m afraid the answer often disappoints them—or isn’t quite what they expect to hear.

I would love to say I obtained a degree in English literature, journalism, or creative writing (such a degree would come handy on a daily basis), then wrote and published stories. Instead, I followed a different path, a path I never dreamed would lead to writing and publishing.

As a teen, when I was bored during math class, I scribbled short stories, imagined new scripts for my favorite TV shows, or rewrote the ending of books I read, but without any writing expectations. It was pure fun. A hobby. A secret passion. I believed my path forward was lit with numbers, not words. I wanted to become an accountant, a statistician, a mathematician, or an actuary. I obtained a degree in business and finance, and for nearly twenty years, numbers ruled my world with little room for words.

 Then one summer day, I underwent a routine surgery but developed a severe infection following major complications. I spent many months in bed. To save my sanity, my husband gave me a laptop so I could interact with the outside world.

Well...I found a writing site. At first, I was a reader, then I gathered the nerve (or maybe it was the meds) to post the opening scene of a story. Next thing I knew I started getting comments about my scene, so I posted another one. Writing my daily scene gave me purpose and pleasure amid the pain. What had started as an escape became a torch at the end of a long tunnel, a flame that rekindled that secret passion buried deep inside me. In time, I healed and re-entered the world of the living, but I couldn’t ignore or re-bottle that passion I unleashed. In the following six years, I wrote and shared over two dozen stories—fun stories that served as learning tools for POV, floating body parts, show vs tell, character development...

Thanks to the encouragement I received, I started writing a special story, a story about a female scuba diver who investigates a Ford Model T sunk at the bottom of a lake, a story I kept to myself and showed to no one. After I finished it, I submitted it in a contest sponsored by a new publisher. In my wildest dreams I never imagined it would land me my first publishing contract.

Writing is a precious gift I rediscovered under difficult circumstances, and it changed my life for the better. The journey is ongoing as I write almost every day and sometimes way too late at night. So far, I’ve published eight novels, I’m midway through a ninth, and I’m geared up to start a new romance paranormal series later this year.

So, how did I become a writer? Quite literally by accident.

Thanks for joining me. Have a wonderful day!
JS




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