Origins Blogfest! and Pinterest

ery slow progress. Steady, but slow. I just want to sit there, eating that ice cream, and spend the weekend reading. I think I'll set aside next weekend as Reading Weekend, just to try to make a dent in the TBR hills, especially all my author friends' books .

Although, the other day, I came up with a new trick that seems so obvious, I don't know why I didn't think of it before. I was all stalled and lazy and just wanted to read, so I thought:

Why don't I WRITE the kind of scene I feel like READING?

And I did! I might post a snip, once I've done a little editing.

Then, the next day, I got a little distracted by my new Pinterest boards. It's like Tumblr, but with images only.

Here's one of the images I'm going to add on there,

Quentin Blake's illustration for the Folio Society book bag:

And now... Origins!

This fun blogfest, which officially begins tomorrow, is hosted by DL Hammons, Alex Cavanaugh, Katie Mills, and Matthew MacNish.

"Post your own origin story. Tell us all where your writing dreams began. ... It all started somewhere and we want you to tell us your own, unique, beginnings."

It all started with my Scottish teacher, Mrs Allan, in the first grade. I wrote this story:

Where was All I did not know what All was or where it was
The Adventure was nice but where was All the cow? - I did not know
Soon it was an adventure
I went out to find him he was no where I went up with a jet he was with the moon

Though I don't actually remember showing the story to anyone except my teacher and my mother, it must have sparked something, because I've been writing ever since.

I attempted my first novel in fourth grade. It was called The Strange Girl, and was about a new girl at school and the tribulations that ensued. I wrote it, and rewrote it, on yellow notebook paper. Somewhere in there, the girls TPed someone's house; my mother's only editorial comment was "you can't use acronyms your readers won't understand."

And the rest is - a long and convoluted - history. Now I write same-theme articles for the newspaper Bizim Anadolu with my mum. And, here's a list of all my stories to date, as part of The Rule of Twenty. Since that list, I've started Rome, Rhymes and Risk, and have a pile of new ideas on the back burner - some of which came from dreams, something I'm still excited and slightly scared by.

Jessica Bell, along with Chuck Sambuchino of Writer's Digest, is hosting a writer's retreat in August - The Homeric Writers' Retreat and Workshop.

How I wish I could go, and have all that time to start drafting new stories, by the Aegean Sea!