No, I don't live in Texas anymore.  (Sorry to all you Texas-livers and Texas-lovers, but I didn't love TX all that much.)  I was born there, however, and it's where my story as a writer begins.

Just setting the scene here.

(Almost exactly what our land looked like...and everyone else's...for, like, 100 miles.  I didn't like it.  I LOVE THE CITY PRAISE JESUS HALLELUJAH.)
Okay okay, now we can get on with the actual story.

Once, there was a little girl named Sierra.  At 7 years old, she wanted to write a book, but she didn't know how.  She told her little sister (4 years old, at the time) that she wanted to write a mystery, but where do you begin with such things?
Do you start with characters?  (Sierra didn't have any characters.)
Do you start with story?  (Sierra kind of sort of had a story.)
Do you start with great writing?  (Sierra did not possess the level of skill she believed she did.)

So, Sierra was stuck.

BUT THEN.  She had the brilliant idea (and once again told the little sister Ember) "WHY DON'T I JUST START WRITING AND SEE WHERE IT GOES?"

So began a pattern for years and years to come. *coughs violently*  (Who, me?!)

Insert me telling you that I recently asked Ember if she remembers these conversations and she just laughed at me and said, NO I WAS FOUR YOU IDIOT.  So.  There's that. 

One day, at 8 years old, sometime at the beginning of the winter of 2001, Sierra grabbed a stack of lined paper and a pen and started writing.


She didn't have any characters, so she made them up on the spot.  She thought, What should I name these strangers?  (The names are embarrassing so I won't put myself through telling the whole world.)  She named them, not caring what anyone else might think.

Then she asked herself, I want this to be a mystery, but how?  So she breathed purpose into these characters and gave them a place to go and a reason to go there (even if the rest of the book and the getting there was full of fluff.  LEAVE HER ALONE SHE WAS 8).

AND THEN SHE WROTE A BOOK.  (About teenagers.  8 years old and writing a YA contemporary mystery/thriller.  MTB, guys, IT WAS MEANT TO BE.)


It was actually horrific and scrawled with Sierra's chicken scratch handwriting that didn't get better until she was eighteen, and it had no purpose or anything to it, but IT WAS THERE.  ALIVE.  A BEAUTIFUL, BREATHING THING.  FULL OF ONE-DIMENSIONAL CHARACTERS.  AND IT WAS SO WONDERFUL.

And Sierra decided then and there that she would write forever and ever, even if she did other things with her life.

That was the beginning of everything.  14 years have passed, and Sierra hasn't regretted a single day, moment, second of pain and anguish put upon her by her own characters and their misery.

The end... (Or TO BE CONTINUED???)

Also, comment and tell me your stories!  How did you guys get started??