on writing a novel

Over the past few days and weeks I've gotten several inquiries about my novel writing endeavors, and since writing isn't something that is as blatantly obvious on Introvert's Introduction as, say photography, what better way to talk about it than with a blog post!

Writing has always been a big interest of mine. I still have my very first "book" I ever wrote, which was written in a spiral bound notebook and illustrated in colored pencil. The title was humbly called "Lauren goes out to eat lunch" and depicted not only my burrito lunch, but also the adventures of my stuffed animal cat, my move to Iceland (which actually happened before I wrote the book, but in my story it occurred after a lot of events that it preceded in real life), and other things such as getting sick and going to the zoo. One of my earliest memories was of me sitting at our cedar chest in the living room one morning eating a bowl of cheerios, watching tv (I think it was Winnie the Pooh), and writing that story. I still have it today thanks to my hoarding self.

So writing has been a part of my life for my entire life, and since it's been so steadfast, I think that's a safe bet I'm meant to do it for a long time. My first "successful" short story was one that was an assignment for our sixth grade literature class, in which it was voted the best story by my peers. And I've been working on that particular tale ever since.



So for about seven years that short story has been cultivating in my mind to one extent or another, and it was only in my senior year of high school when our final project was to write a 100 page novel did that story come alive again. I won't give away too many details about it, but basically the entire allegory is actually about the human depiction of Wisdom in the book of Proverbs from the Bible. The story is also about pirates. I would say it's a fantasy fiction geared towards upper young adults (16-25 or so). As I keep writing it while I grow older, the age range grows older, go figure. One of my resolutions was to write one page in it a week, but currently that's on hold as the entire novel is on an external hard drive which I currently cannot access, also go figure.



In the meantime, I've been doing what I always do when I put off my novel (I've put it off for seven years, and I'm sure it will still be a long time before it's done), which is write other stories, write assignments for school, write for this blog. With photography entering my life, much of my energy goes into that, which is not a bad thing in the least because it is something I can't live without and has given me a lot of meaning in life, but I really am trying to combine the two arts that I so dearly love. Like I mentioned in a previous post, for one of my photography assignments I'm also writing a story to go along with it, and I can't wait to share it with you guys. As for the novel, I'm still dreaming about it and am fine with it cultivating some more in my mind. It's grown a lot from the short story I wrote in sixth grade and I'm sure it will grow even more as time goes on.