Introduction

Nothing gets the creative juices flowing quite like a good cup of coffee on a cold, rainy Saturday morning. 

Hence, this introduction.

I have been battling with the idea of a blog for quite some time. I love writing, and someday I dream of quitting my nine-to-five-plus job and writing full time. But for now, it’s more of a hobby.

I think the idea of being a writer came to me as a freshman in high school. I had this great English teacher, who everyone both equally feared and adored, who made us read all kinds of books. Some I found so interesting that I breezed right through them, and some I struggled through, barely passing the test on them. We read short stories that used sentences like “a grey, penguin of a woman” that I didn’t understand. We read great books like, Cry, the Beloved Country about the Apartheid in Africa that brought me to tears. We read classic books like The Iliad that both confused and intrigued me. We were introduced to such a variety of books and writing styles that it was almost impossible to walk away from that class without some sort of appreciation for the written word.  

I had set a goal for myself in high school, to maintain straight A’s all the way through. The last quarter of this English class, I received a B+. When I opened that report card, I sat down and cried, thinking my whole high school career was over, and that there was no point to even try. Once I gained some sense back, I decided instead of letting that derail my dream, I would let it inspire me to try harder. The next year in English class, we had a new teacher. The beloved English teacher of my freshman year had moved on to a job at a text book publisher, and we had to adjust to a new style from an unknown teacher. After a few weeks of feeling like we weren’t being challenged, several of us students went to the teacher and told her she needed to assign more homework. The rest of the class hated us for it, and the teacher laughed at us for it, but we had high standards. As the year went on, we grew to love the new teacher and ended up enjoying her class. I earned straight A’s in that class all year. 

Besides the B+ grade, I walked away from my freshman English class with concrete knowledge of how to write. We not only read great writing, we learned to be great writers ourselves. We learned the basics of sentence structure, and how to vary them. We learned the stepping stones to a classic five-paragraph essay, and how to expand it into more. These skills carried me through the rest of high school and through college. That strong foundation helped me to discover my love of writing.

So, here I am, writing a blog. All of that background is just to say that I am a work in progress, stating from a young age. Someday I will be a published author, and this blog is to help me practice and perfect the art of writing. Not every post will be lengthy, or insightful, or probably even interesting. I probably won’t post a lot of crafts (that’s what Pinterest is for) or have money saving tips (check out my sister’s blog for that - http://homelifedollar.blogspot.com/ ). 

But, I will have my insights into life – that will hopefully get you thinking, and maybe even get your creative juices flowing!