Reflections on more than 10 years of Writing

Start writing...I've been writing for most of my life. One of my earliest school memories was in the first grade. We were assigned a booklet and told to make up a story every day - complete with illustrations. I filled up the entire book within a couple of days, and went as far as to ask for another.

To say that writing was something that I'd always wanted to do would be an understatement, but it was always discouraged by the authority figures in my life. "You'll never make money doing that", "You have to write *the* book, and you're just not good enough for that", "Give up and just look for a real job, creatives don't succeed" - all phrases barked at me as though they were religious mantras.

I'd like to say that I stood steadfast against all the naysayers and chased my dreams regardless. But, that wouldn't be the truth. People naturally recoil at the path of most resistance, and announcing that you in fact do not want to go to college and want to write stories for a living instead is certainly an option that is met with plenty of resistance.

I went to college for nursing at first, and it was just as much of a disaster as one who knows me personally would have expected. I never stopped writing though. Over those two years, I wrote two novellas; one of which will likely never see the light of day. Even when I dropped out and briefly entered the workforce, I still, inexplicably, continued to weave stories. The fire never went out, even if it did get reduced to glowing embers for a time.

I won't bore you with the details, but after a time, the fact that I'm the kind of person who simply cannot thrive in a traditional employment environment became impossible to ignore. Around 2015, I quit the minimum wage job I held at the time and chose to freelance full time. I sought out web development jobs, along with freelance writing jobs. It was hard. Probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. But, even during famine like periods where I had no clients and no money, I've never once regretted that decision.

Of course, along with everything else, the pandemic changed everything for me. My main clientele for my web development business dried up, and I was too focused on obtaining my degree in software to really care. So, to keep busy, I focused on something that I knew I could do well: storytelling.

Writing "The Wendigo" was a challenging experience. I knew the story I wanted to tell long before I started typing. What made it so hard was writing about my Indigenous culture faithfully (Metis Nation of Ontario) without accidentally confirming the stereotypes or biases of others, and still manage to tell a story that felt genuinely terrifying to readers of all ethnic backgrounds. To this day, while there are a few things I would change, I consider that novella to be one hell of an achievement.

If "The Wendigo" was hard though, "The Barrows Below" felt even harder, especially seeing as it's only the first part in what will ultimately be a monumentally complex fantasy series. I'm one of those people that will read about what kind of wood elves use to make their tooth picks so long as there's a lot of it. I love lore, and often spend hours reading descriptions in RPGs just to get more. I learned very quickly that it's much easier to keep the lore of others straight than it is to make up your own as you go along.

So, what am I doing these days, and what's next for me? Well, I'm writing more books. That much hasn't changed, and I'm hoping to release at least a couple more before the end of the year. And, I'm still writing on a freelance basis as well. Turns out, all those naysayers were wrong. In the age of the internet, you can do just about anything you want.

And, what I want to do is write. Here's to another ten years.

If you're interested in my published works, you can find my Amazon author page below.