I've been writing fiction since I was a child, inspired by the thousands of wonderful books (and their authors*) that I devoured, flying from cover to cover, book to book.
I never got to take a course in creative writing. I just knew writing was fun, and I loved to do it.
When I was in middle school (Go Cards!) and high school (Go Vikes!), I was fairly prolific and wrote pages upon pages of adventure stories, starring my friends in quirky situations. I wrote about calculators, people's shoes, penguins learning to cook, purple monkeys, shrunken apple heads, and much more nonsense that I don't care to admit to these days.
I even won a handful of writing contests. They don't mean anything to anyone now, but I'll always recall them with a little pride.
It was easier back then. I remember summer afternoons jamming out pages of dialogue, single-spaced in the smallest font possible, laughing to myself as I got my unsuspecting friends in and out of bizarre situations. I didn't overthink every word.
My audience consisted of my friends, so I didn't understand the concept of character development. I didn't need it -- everyone knew the characters in my stories and what they were like.
And, GUILTY, almost all of my stories were left unfinished. I even titled one of the stories "The Unfinished Story of..." because I knew I'd never finish it, even from the start. Either I didn't know when (or how) to end a story, or as it often happened, I started writing with enthusiasm, only for that enthusiasm to peter out as I got more involved in schoolwork.
When I began thinking seriously about a writing career, I knew I would have to stop leaving stories unfinished. As far as I know, most people don't like to be left hanging, wondering if their books are missing the last few pages. Thus, The Fracture of a Dream started off with an ending, and I planned the major events and timeline clearly before I began writing.
Details changed as I began the actual writing process, of course, but having the structure of a planned plot has allowed me to write the story out of order and leave parts unwritten when the details were not yet clear to me. It's worked out very well for me, and I completely intend to model future writing projects on this one.
Ren D.
*No authors were harmed in my childhood quest to read the entire library. Lest you think I'm a cannibal, I didn't actually devour any authors -- just their inspiring ideas!