Question 63 – When did you start writing fiction, and what did you write?

I don’t have anything to give me an exact date, even a year, but I do remember writing stories in the little blue-covered test books we were given in elementary school.  The earliest one I can recall was a story something like The Ordinary Princess, but from the perspective of her maid/companion — even then, I was completely uninterested in princesses or other royalty.  I don’t remember the plot, but that feeling has continued to this day; I’d rather follow the exploits of peasants and soldiers and just comment on the nobility from afar.

Expanding on this…  I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, with at least one complete short story based on my current writing-world done back when I was thirteen.  I still use a lot of the material I imagined back then (from about 13-18) as background info for the world; I have an entire notebook I wrote histories and details in while in high school, and found my first awesome nerd-friend by showing it to people.

I also have two fragments of stories from 1990, when I was ten, involving D&D-style adventuring parties.  Since I was apparently reading the Dragonlance books at age eight, this makes sense.

I started drafting my series in earnest in 2003 — at least, that’s what my file dates indicate.  Clearly it took a long time for me to sort the ideas into a manageable form, because I only published the first one in 2013.

More: Authors Answer 63 – We All Started Somewhere