When I was growing up, I wanted to be a recluse.
Which is exactly how I ended up married with children, right? Ha ha!
Tag: autobiography
My Blog
I’m not going to teach you how to write. Basic grammar is taught in school, and everything else comes with practice and experience. Use your brain and your talent, don’t be afraid to write a few crappy novels before you get the knack of it, and you’ll be fine. Besides, those crappy novels just might become best sellers — you never know these days.
I used to read blogs written by some of my favorite authors. I never cared about their technique, and didn’t visit their blog because I wanted to know how they did it. I wanted to know about them, as a person. Who were they? What were they like? What hobbies and interests did they have? Were they total weirdos like me?
I use my time differently now, so I don’t follow very many blogs anymore. I still have the same interest as before: I want to know about the author behind the stories.
The purpose of my blog is to answer that question for you. This is what I’m like.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Living vs. Learning: My Take on English Education
During my first semester in college, someone told me, “Majoring in English is the worst thing a writer can do.” Sure enough, all of my English professors taught us how to write formulaic essays, endlessly analyzing literature, where word count mattered more than style. The other students never thought much about it.
But here’s the thing:
In my high school Creative Writing class, we were required to write stories in different genres for the practice. At the end of the year, after I had already used all of my favorite genres, I decided to write teen pathos for my final project. In just a couple of hours, I had cranked out a short story about a girl running away from home and getting her boyfriend killed in a car crash — it was very human interest-y, and I even laughed at how over-the-top it was while I was writing it. But hey, I needed a story for the grade, and I had already done fantasy.
And everyone thought it was autobiographical.
My mother threw a fit, and my best friend started wailing at me, how could you think such things? It caused quite a bit of drama in my real life, and no one believed me when I told them that it was meaningless.
A few months later when I sat in my college English class and listened to my fellow students analyze literature, I could easily imagine them discussing that story I had written. “A car crash symbolizes the author’s latent destructive desires.” Actually no, car crashes are easy go-tos for killing people, to make the story more melodramatic and pathetic. Not everything is symbolic.
I couldn’t take my peers or professors seriously at all. I started to play a game, to come up with the most absurd interpretations I could — supported with quotes from the text, of course — and my English professors loved and praised me with no inkling of what I was doing. It all just seemed ridiculous.
I dropped out of college entirely after two years. My best education came from the time I spent living in a van and traveling the country. In other words, living.
I understand why I had been told not to major in English. Those classes can teach you how to B.S. your way through formulas, but they can’t teach you how to write with your soul. Often, they are detrimental to that very practice.
Thank you for sharing my work!
About me
I started writing my first novel when I was ten, inspired by my love of the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, about mice and rats with the wonderful element of magic mixed in, because I’ve always been hopelessly in love with fantasy. It became my dream to be a writer, and every free moment was spent curled up with a notebook and my favorite pen. By the time I turned 20, I had finished four novellas.
Then life happened. College wasn’t working for me, so I dropped out, found a full-time job, and moved out on my own. Then, just a couple of months before my 22nd birthday, I met a man and fell madly in love. A week later, we vowed to spend our lives together. I quit my job, devoted myself to the role of wife, and once again turned my sights towards writing.
That’s when the bad luck started. After a few months my husband lost his job and couldn’t find a new one. By the time I turned 23, we were homeless. We spent the next two years living off savings as we traveled the country in our car, looking for work and meeting countless numbers of people.
After our first daughter was born, our situation finally turned around for the better. My husband found a good job and we settled down. Our second daughter came along a couple years later, and shortly afterwards we were able to buy a house. Now we have a son as well, making us a family of five (and four cats, one bird, and fish).
Becoming a mother is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, and it’s a dream come true to spend every day playing and caring for my children. But I never forgot my wish to be an author, and a number of experiences that I went through during our period of homelessness became stagnant inside of me and impossible to express. For a time I felt as if I would lose myself against them. On a lark I decided to pick up writing again, and found catharsis. After more than seven years hiatus, I’m creating worlds and characters again.
I don’t write about my experiences, and none of my stories are autobiographical in any way. I write my emotions, in fantastical circumstances that tickle my fancy and indulge my creativity. I write what I love.
I write because I was born to.
By Autumn Rain 