Although I have loved books all my life, I never seriously considered becoming an author until 2 1/2 years ago. I used to create stories to amuse myself while at my children's baseball or soccer practice and violin or piano lessons, but never considered writing them down. But one day as I took my daily walk and was thinking about one of my stories, a thought popped into my head. "Why don't you write them into a book?" My next thought was, "Gee, I never thought about that." I couldn't shake the thought of writing though. So I started typing my ideas into the computer in the form of a narrative outline. I was so afraid that I would never be able to stick with it enough that it was 6 weeks before I told my husband I was writing a book. I would have waited longer, but my kids ratted me out. They told my husband that I'd checked out a bunch of NASCAR books (and I'm not a big fan), so he asked my why.
Nine months later, I had my first draft in my hand. I thought I was ready to have a few people look it over, do some minor revisions, then start trying to find a publisher. Boy, was I ever clueless! By this point, I knew that my writing was a God-thing. The simple fact that I'd been able to stick with it enough to finish it, much less survive the brutal honesty of my husband's critiques told me that. God continued to provide and led me to a wonderful critique group. The ladies of Fiction Writer almost literally taught me fiction writing style. I had a good plot and storyline, but the style and mechanics had a long way to go.
After 6 months of revisions, I was finally ready to start querying agents. I did this for 5 months with minimal success. Three agents asked for a partial manuscript, but eventually, all of the queries led to rejections. After receiving professional critiques through a writing contest and a writing conference, I realized that I needed to do one more major revision. I finished about 2 months ago and a small publishing house is now considering my full manuscript. I am hopeful that this is this will work out and that I will become a published author this year.
In the meantime, I have started a second novel and have been building up my website/blog. Currently, I am working on a series of articles about common writing errors and how to correct them.
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