Hello, my name's Christina. I'm a writer. I've had a love for writing ever since I was little, but I wasn't serious about it until 2012. Prior to 2012, I would never have considered myself a "real writer," but in 2012 I started writing more and more and actually started falling in love with my work.
Over the past few years, I had heard about this writing competition called NaNoWriMo, but I had never been serious enough about writing to participate. In 2012, I decided to participate--for the first time ever. It was probably my best friend that led me to finally do it. We had actually met in a creative writing class in middle school and we were instant friends. A week before NaNoWriMo started in November 2012, I told her about the story I had originally planned on writing during the month of November, but I also mentioned to her that I was thinking about restarting my story, The Daughter of Robin Hood (or TDRH). It's about Lenora "Lee" Hood. She had run away from her father and started her own band of thieves. Three years later, she's ready to scatter and go into permanent hiding, after she steals the prince's fortune.
My friend greatly encouraged me to restart TDRH. I'm so glad she did! In the week before November 1st, I created all of these little posters on giant pieces of paper so I could have at a glance information when I needed it. They're still on my wall nearly four months later and I don't think I'm going to take them down. There were a few times in the two to three days before November 1st where I almost felt like chickening out of writing TDRH. I kept seeing that people had had the idea before me and "the daughter of Robin Hood" kind of story had already been thought of. I was discouraged. I thought that my idea was one of a kind unique, but then these things appeared in my bank of knowledge and I realized I wasn't the only one with the idea. My mom told me to stick with TDRH, and I'm glad I did.
Before November started, my friend added me to a writing group that's now called The Tea Spitters. I think having them to spend my first NaNoWriMo with made the month so much more enjoyable. Throughout that month, I actually started sharing excerpts with them and getting so much wonderful, sweet feedback from them. Sharing was a new concept to me, but now that I've gotten comfortable with a few people reading my work, I want everyone to read my work. Sharing it became addicting, but the good kind of addicting.
Throughout the NaNoWriMo adventure, I kept falling back in love with TDRH. It was the best feeling in the world, about a week or more into the event, realizing I was falling back in love with a story I had given up on. I had previously given up on TDRH because it was so boring, so that's why I needed all of the encouragement to get back into it, but I'm glad that this second time I stuck with it. I fell in love with these characters that I had previously created. They weren't just these drama-centered selfish thieves. For me, they were people with heart-breaking back stories that breathed to life off of the page. They had grown up from being stiff characters to characters with reasons behind their actions and actual personalities. All of them have their secrets and all of them have their quirks. Some of them are hot tempered while one of them in particular likes messing with everyone for the fun of it. Some of them are brokenhearted and ready for a change while some of them are happy with who they are and content in their life situation. I'm happy with how these characters developed as I started writing because they all have their motives and everything has a reason behind it.
The first part of Lee's story came to a close quite recently, but it isn't the end. I'm looking forward to two more books, quite possibly more, with her and my other beloved characters, quite possibly more. I've begun to feel like TDRH is the first step in my writing journey. I turned the first page in November when I started rewriting, and retelling, this story. It turned out quite different than the first attempt at it, but I'm happy that these changes were made. They were major improvements compared to the first attempt that has been collecting dust since I stopped working on it. In fact, only a few certain lines were kept, partly because I didn't have time to reread the whole 99 page document before NaNoWriMo started, but also because there weren't any lines that fit in with the new course of events.
That's just a little bit about my writing. TDRH is the first thing that I've actually finished, so for more reasons than one, it's very dear to me. I'm even more attached to the characters. I fell in love with all of their personalities and flaws. The realest characters, to me at least, are the ones that have flaws, and mine do. None of them are perfect. I think that's why I'm so proud of TDRH, because none of the characters are perfect. They lie, and steal, and cheat, and they keep their secrets from each other whether it's for the right reasons or not. Those things are all wrong and shouldn't be done, but they're thieves and that's what they do. Even the prince who is supposed to have a perfect image stoops down to their level because, let's face it, nobody's perfect. Perfection is virtually unattainable unless you're God. He is Perfection.
Before I go any further, this is only the second blog post I've ever written. I don't know what this blog is going to be about, but I'm certain that it's going to be about my writing journey. There's definitely going to be some Christian messages in there at times because that's just who I am, but other than that this blog will probably be a jumbled collection of random thoughts in the convenient form of an organized blog.
Until next time,
Christina
