A Girl Named Salvation

Twenty-two years ago, I started to write fiction. I was nine years old. I suppose my first forays into writing could have been classified as fan fiction, but is there really a genre classification at that age?


Over the years, as we all do, I grew as a writer and of course, as a person. I was 16 when I started writing about a girl named Salvation. She was naive and beautiful and the only daughter of a rock star. I wrote every day for 3 years until my hand was cramped and at least 10 pages were filled. In the end, I believe there were 5 notebooks filled with my illegible scrawl. I can't say whether it was good or not, but at this point, that is irrelevant.


At 19, I left school to give myself time to finish the "Great Canadian Novel," deluding myself into thinking I could accomplish such a task. I took up a full time job and to make a long story short, let my writing fall by the wayside, received my G.E.D. (high school equivalency) in 1998 and forgot what creativity was in the wake of real life in Toronto.


In 2001, I moved back to my hometown outside of Ottawa and resumed writing to some degree...in the course of 5 years, I rewrote the "Salvation" story at least 4 times. It stagnated, stunted and halted me in my tracks. I barely wrote for the following 4 years.


And here I am in 2010. Finally, I have decided to lay my dear Salvation to rest and leave her behind. I have begun an undertaking that will either kill me as a writer or make me stronger. I am writing a fantasy novel, something I always wished I could do as a reader who loved fantasy, but never had enough faith in myself to do. I don't know if I yet have faith, but I do have ambition and my love and abandon as a writer is coming back in waves.


I can only hope for the best, cleanse my pallet of the stories of the past and move on...wish me luck.