Backstory (pt. 2)

Teach Your Children Well...

"their father's hell will slowly go by," and they will grow up, quickly and swiftly.

A single baobob tree growing in just behind a pool of
water and in the middle of a plush green field.
The baobob tree is also growing up and was the author's
very favorite tree, grade 3.

In pt. 1 you surely noticed the main character was Alex. I am Alex, or I was. Just before entering the third grade I tacked the -a on at the end and became Alexa forever more. The story goes that that summer I was on vacation with my family and we were at the beech. A bunch of other families were there too, of course. A bunch of other families also had kid's called Alex. I distinctly remember half a dozen other moms standing on the beech calling for their kids "Alex!" "Alex, come here!" "Come on, Alex!" "Alex!" "Alex!" Every time I turned to answer I see some other kid, more often than no a boy, running and answering to my name. When we get home I demand to have my own name. One that no one else on any beech or anywhere else is going to share. My family, and everyone else, acquiesced.

Of course, now Amazon has gone and stolen my name.
I demand compensation. 

Age: 9, Grade 4
The floor is hard but not cold. Typical of classroom carpets the carpet is grey, thin, and itchy. Alexa's elbows rest on the carpet and the carpet presses back, indenting them with an angry red pebbled-pattern, that her elbows will share with her knees. The rest of her body, from knees to chest, is protected by clothing and the pressure from the floor pressing up as Alexa lies there reading is comforting. Her head rests heavy in one hand, the other hand hold down the pages of her book, preventing them from flipping pre-maturely. There is probably enough time left of SSR for Alexa to finish the chapter, for Eragon it looks like Eragon might finally reach Teirm, not that it isn't super cool to read about his trekking, magic learning, walking, sword fighting, and dragon riding with Saphira and Brom. It feels like it takes forever to finish each page and a the minutes of silence and stillness of the early afternoon are ticking by fast. Too soon the lights with flicker on and Alexa will need to move on to finding the mean, median, and mode of the scores of the past months lost Bengals games. Still, she has time.

I had lots of time. Time to finish that book and so many others.  I also realized I didn't have much time to get down to business writing if I was going to publish by fifteen, like Christopher Paolini, or eighteen, like Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (my, then, idols). Spoiler alert: I didn't make it.

Unless you count the story I "published" in sixth grade with the help of my teacher. The Wind Blows was a story about orphaned sisters living on a farm who found out that a body of water on their property was actually a portal to the elven realm and in that realm they were some sort of elve royalty that had to save the world. If you want to read it here you go. Full disclosure, it was written by an eleven year old who didn't care too much for spelling or grammar yet and I have not gone back to proofread it. The font is so tiny because it was "published" by being printed, then cut and paste onto the pages of blank book, and when it was a normal-readable-font size I had too many pages to fit into the book, so I improvised. Other parts of the book were a bit more professional, take a look at my cover and copyright pages or my about the author blurb with experimental comma usage.

Alexa, eleven-going-on-twelve, circa 2006.
Image description: girl with messy shoulder length brown hair and blue-eyes smiles,
mouth-closed probably full of food, because she is sitting cross-legged at a cherry wood table
eating what appears to be blueberry cake on a square black plate. She is wearing a yellow t-shirt
and has a white blanket covering her lap. A family room with a old-school tube TV, fireplace, and
assorted furniture is in the background.

Composite, Grades 7/8
Alexa flips through the pages of her lilac composition notebook, the covers are soft around the corners and the pages are crisp and crinkly. She runs her finger across the indents from her messy writing on the backside of the previous page and skims the her notes about her wrath towards Brandt and his last stupid lesson. She swears she likes school its just Brandt she doesn't like. Something about him makes her angry and so after she has paid attention long enough to figure out all of the important bits of his lesson she gets to open her notebook (it is not a diary or journal) and write, most of that writing is stream of conscious, as often as not about how frustrated she is with Brandt but sometimes actual stories or poems. It is lunch now, though, so she sits on the curb at the top of the hill going down to the soccer field where most of her peers are running around screaming. The sun is warm on her back and her knees make the perfect desk. Alexa stares at and then dates the next clean page. At first she pauses to worry about how messy her hand writing looks. The letters are too rounded and the each lean in different directs, and when she isn't careful like she just wasn't they smear together. Then she refocuses and starts actually writing. Sometimes her stories get a bit graphic, when she writes these bits her stomach clenches worrying what would happen if someone else were to find her book. Would they heed her warning scrolled on the first page, "If found: please return to Alexa. NOT FOR YOUR EYES." Or would that make them more likely to read it? Wouldn't that be mortifying. It doesn't matter, Alexa knows, because no one is going to pick up the notebook, it doesn't leave her hands long enough for that to happen, ever. 

 I have about eight composition notebooks from middle school. Each filled. Short stories, starts of novels, and stream of conscious. Some of them are so worn that the cardboard covers have fallen off. Now, they are mostly useful for insight into a middle schooler's head, I don't have to wonder how I thought when I was thirteen, I know. I have it written down in great detail.

In middle school I also go super into Maximum Ride by James Patterson. If you corner me today and demand I name a favorite book there is a good chance that will be my answer. It was one book series that was fundamental to the formation of my identity. Except, when Final Warning came out I was highly disappointed and kind of angry at James Patterson (and his team of ghost writers) for all of the mistakes they made with the story. So I wrote my own version of book four. You can take a look at most of that here.  Although I didn't finish, and again I could have benefited from some proofreading, I maintain that I did more justice to Max than J. Pat's goons did. Seriously, don't try to have a civil conversation with me about the latter Maximum Ride books. Although, on a different note, if you go to my FanFiction.net profile you can also find crossover Maximum Ride / Twilight fanfic that I wrote. Good stuff.

Now, I'm a big kid and I pretty much only write my own stuff. Still, I can't deny where I got my start and some great practice in the craft of writing. You shouldn't ever hear my knock fanfiction. If you want to know what I'm really up to today check out my recent announcement.

Announcement, August 2017

What did I say about Fits and Starts?

This is me starting and fitting and starting again. 

I promised I am going to make this into something.

Something consistent. 

Getting there will take some trial and error, I promise.

Image Description: Green and glowing interlocking systems.
Image source described as a "chaos clock." 

1) Because I swear it a bold-faced-lie turned myth that it only takes 30 days of consistently doing something for it to become a habit. I can do something daily, religiously, for months and one bad week and its dead in the water. That issue doesn't quite apply here but it goes to show it will take sometime before I really get into and keep the rhythm of writing for public consumption. 

2) I actually have been writing. I just don't know when exactly it happened. Or how, besides sometimes I do keep by habits regardless of external forces. Given the circumstances of its drafting I'm currently operating under the assumption that very little of it is of a caliber worthy of an external audience. 

3) Back in June my goal was to get to the point where I was reliable writing at least one post a week, totaling to four a month. So that by the end of August when there was some material established and a posting schedule established I could start marketing/sharing/really putting this out there on the inter-webs. Keeping such goals private obviously didn't work. So, I hereby set my future goals so such: by the end of August I will have posted 3 posts total (this one plus 2), I will post once a week in September and October, so I can re-access a full public launch in November. By November there should be at least 11 new posts total. 

I am writing though.

I am a writer. Still chipping away at Slowdown Peter, starting the pre-writing stage of a project with my BFF, and expiermenting with short-form prose.

As a writer I of course am still reading. I have finally finished A Dance With Dragons by R.R. Martin and am sad that it will be a while before I can consume the final Song of Fire and Ice installment. At least I only have to wait a week before the season finale of Game of Thrones. Currently, I am also keeping myself occupied, working on reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. 

Since I don't know what happened to July and August it might be worth mentioning for record here that in that time I also started working at an office supply store, applied to and enrolled in graduate school, and just on Monday of this week began working towards my Masters of Education. 

Exciting times.

Exciting times we are living in. Except totally in the terrifying, what on Earth is going to happen next way?