Here’s the last guest post I said I had planned for you! It was going to be posted in December but my schedule became too full so here it is now! This post was written by Ren, author of The Grim Reaper.

How it all started…

With NaNoWriMo gone and over for 2017, a lot of us will be staring at an odd number of words, hacking through that first draft like a whipper snipper through grass on the first day of summer. But let me ask you all a question: Is this how it started for you? Was NaNoWriMo your first step towards writing? Or was it a little different?

My first step was a sixteen foot fall down a rusted pipe.

Why? Well… I wasn’t a writer. Never was. Writing was my sister’s thing. She’d write a myriad of fanfictions and she was an excellent writer at that. She talked about writing her own original story more than once.

Writing was my sister’s thing.

Reading was also her thing.

Writing and reading were not my thing.

Fourteen years old… I was lost in fantasy, making my own rules, my own characters, my own crazy and complex universes. But these were dreams. These were jotted down on napkins or lost pieces of paper. I made these with help from video games, mangas and animes. I wasn’t much of a novel reader because that was what my mom and my sister shared. And I was ok with that because I had my worlds.

Ten years later, I started to listen… to me. University was close to done. I’d started reading. I was free to be me because I’d grown up and understood that reading could be everyone’s thing. I still dreamed but I also learned to talk. To accept that my crazy wasn’t as crazy as I thought. Because I’d found the crazy that worked with mine. Someone who was ready to listen. The person that would become my best friend told me she’d listen to that crazy idea of mine. And so I told her about my world between two exams and that was when she told me: “I’d read something like this.”

I’d never written anything in my life.

I wanted to write it. I wanted to write it so badly. Just so she could read it, enjoy it, maybe find it a little bit interesting. So I tried. I started writing. And it was the worst mess I’d ever seen. It was nothing like the story I wanted it to be but she still read it.

I told no one. Just kept on putting words on paper.

I wasn’t a writer.

I met Leevi, the flirty lover with a heart that belonged to only one person. I met Greer, the rational and clear-thinking Ranger who ravaged his way from a secondary character to a main one. I met Rebecca, the one who couldn’t wait and hoped for something better.
And then finally, I met Azel, the man who thought he was alone and let the voices inside his head take over only to finally understand that the people around him were there to help.

Azel was me.

And he wasn’t a writer.

But then… NaNoWriMo 2015 happened. And I hopped on the train till the finish line. I wrote, read, edited; wrote, read, edited; wrote, read, edited. I grew tired, restless, frustrated. But my best friend was still there on the side line, rooting for me. I finally told my mom. She told me she would read it. I finally told my friends. They told me they’d read it. I wanted to write this. For them.

But I still wasn’t a writer.

I kept going for two whole years. Until… It happened. I was done. I had actually written a book, bought a book cover, had made it go through beta reading. I was the author of The Grim Reaper. Azel’s story.

My story.

I was finally a writer

NaNoWriMo for me is now something I can’t miss. It’s my one and only chance of pushing myself further. I still read, I still write, I still edit. I’m still me. I’m a writer. I’m even an author. I mean, I’ve got a book published and that can be bought on Amazon with my name on it. But it wasn’t just me… It was everyone around me as well.

It all started with an idea ten years ago…

It all started with the right words…

It all started with understanding who I was…

It all started with the people around me…

It all started with one book…

It’s all it takes. For any one of you out there.

AHHHH!!! I love this post so much. I hope you loved it as well! If you’re a writer, how did writing start for you?

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