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What Happened To My Brain When I Starting Writing Fiction
I’ve always been a nonfiction writer. I love writing essays, any kind of essays even literary analysis essays. I also fell in love with rhetoric. And I have written many articles over the years about my passion of belly dance. Occasionally I even pen a poem.
But, fiction? Not so much.
At age nine I wrote (and illustrated) a story about a witch. At 12, I wrote a story about a little wolf and at 14 I thought I might write a Harlequin Romance and made it through ten pages. That was the extent of my fiction forays until the age of 63 when I started my capstone for my Bachelor’s degree in writing.
To be honest, my intent was to write non-fiction. However, my subject was impossible to research because it I wanted to write about women during the Neolithic or stone age. There are no written records from that time period but archaeological evidence suggests certain things which intrigued me.
Because there are no written records from that area, I decided to jump in with both feet and write fiction. It was truly the hardest thing I’ve ever written.
For some people stories just come to them. For instance, my belly dance troupe decided to rent a beach house for the weekend and while we were there a seagull hung out on the porch. The next thing I know, one of…