The Goddess Who Turned into a Cow

Picture it: seventh grade hallways smelling of a mixture of old book pages, coffee lingering on sleepy adults' breath, and the mix of Victoria Secret body mist and Axe body spray. The walls lined with blue lockers, a young girl, feeling frumpy in her Aéropostale jeans and sweater, clutching a stack of books against her chest. She avoids her locker due to the unseemly crush she has on the boy who lives on the other side of the tracks.

Ovid-Elsie Middle School. Not the village of Ovid or Elsie was big enough for their own Middle or High School, so they came together. She didn't have much knowledge, wasn't good at much, academics or sports, though she did try. Soccer was too much running, Track and Field was too much track not enough field, and basketball was becoming less about skill and more about endurance, which again, not her strong suit. Volleyball was a pipe dream and Cheerleading was much too pretty for our young lost one.

It was within the walls of an English classroom, balanced upon a single assignment. Write a short story about a God or Goddess. She was unsure, but willing to try to come up with some made up story. How hard could it be? We day dream all the time, surely I could write some silly little story.

At home, utterly alone, sitting in the dining room behind the family computer, she began to write. It was a simple story. The Gods and Goddesses looking own at humanity, watching them wither away.

"How can we help?" Cried one worried Goddess, a kind hearted woman with milky, soft skin and jet black hair.

As an adult, I haven't laid eyes on the story since the assignment, but I can recall it was not all that great, compared to my story telling skills now. But for a seventh grader who had never written anything creative before, my teacher saw my potential. She gave me high praise, something I not used to receiving. Even with my skills unpracticed, I still managed to write a fairly creative and compelling story about a Goddess who sacrificed herself to become the first ever cow and feed humanity. Thinking back on that concept, not great. Humans don't need cows milk to live, in fact, the idea of drinking another animals milk for sustenance is a bit unnatural. Why not milk humans? Why aren't we drinking human milk?

Anyway, not the point, the point is that an English teacher saw how one of her students managed to produce a complex, slightly thoughtful story. She was very impressed, which made me realize maybe I was good at something!

So I wrote. I completed my first full length novel by ninth grade, brainstormed a complex vampire series that I ended up scrapping. Wrote two more full length novels for my friends to enjoy. Completed my fourth by my first year of college.

This is where things get muddy. Did I need a college degree to be an author? I don't think so, but five years, and a Bachelors of Science later, I am a proud owner of a fancy piece of paper. The university I attended had limited creative writing classes, and I even had the special experience of my creative writing professor tell me that it was "unlikely" I'd make enough money off of writing to support myself.

But it was never about a ginormous best seller that would make my whole career and support me for the rest of my life. My writing has always been about the stories I want to tell, the characters I want to create. I am filled to the brim with untold stories that refuse to stay inside me. I've filled notebooks with plot, ways to fill the holes, and characteristics of the people in my books.

I have enough ideas that I don't need a single best seller. I will establish myself by filling the shelves of some bookstore where someone will have to pick up a book by Myrna Collins and see, oh wow she has dozens of titles. They only need to fall in love with one story to get hooked and read the rest, right?

I know publishing is a business, and I am aware that I need to sell, but I believe I have the imagination to get me there. The way I can come up with a story and really dive deep inside it to make sure I'm filling any possible plot hole, or to ensure I am flushing each character out completely. I like to take my time with stories, write the interesting fluff that makes you fall in love with a character, or to make the reader feel like they really know the main character. I take the time to really write a compelling, well thought out story and refuse to simply blast through the plot.

I've made that mistake before, queried a novel that wasn't anywhere near being close to ready, because I thought if I could juts get paid to write I could really take the time to do it right. But that was a lesson I needed to learn. Every story deserves to be told with all the love and care inside your body. So, three years and three more manuscripts later, I've noticed my skill has truly improved over the years of rushed plots or cheesy, overdone love plots. I'm getting into the grit of my stories, making them dark and twisty, deep and compelling. Making sure every aspect of my tale checks out, makes sense, and gets an explanation if needed.

My love for storytelling is infinite and has saved my life.