The storyteller, and the birth of "Become"

When I was a little girl, around five or six I wrote a story about a stuffed toy of mine, a winged angel bear named "Wheaty." Everyone thought that I called him "Weedie", because I was too young to spell. I didn't understand until much later that that's what they thought I had named my critter. I imagine that they chalked the name up to some cute, kid like, sensibility at the time.

In reality, I called him that because he was the colour of wheat, pale and golden in the sun.

A teacher complimented my work, though it was unfinished and remains so to this day. She said something along the lines of, "if Jill would only put her mind to finishing her work, it could be really amazing." Or something along those lines (I'm paraphrasing a bit, of course, as I wasn't the one she said this to).

Flash forward a few years.
I remember in grade five, that my teacher asked us to write a story. I can't recall if there was a specific challenge, though I'm sure there was. In any case, I was quite taken with the tragedy of the Titanic in those days, and chose to use that as my source material. The story was called "The Blue Crystal", and it was about a woman who dives down to the wreckage, finds a blue crystal, gets knocked out by some falling sludge, and then is implored by the doomed spirits to "save them". One of the ending scenes had the souls floating up into the sky in life boats. While there are some factual errors with the whole idea, the story was held up by my teacher as what he wanted the class to do, reading several sentences of my work as an example.

I must admit that the unexpected praise was a boon to my adolescent ego. Not that I *did* anything with it, mind you.

Alas. I continued along, writing stories that remained half finished, with two dimensional characters left in my wake, screaming out for me to give them something to do - a quirk, a flaw, a talent, anything so that they wouldn't just sit there, lifeless on the page.

My mother spoke with the local writer's guild and asked them to send some information out to me. This is information which I keep to this day, even though much of the info is outdated.
Still, I did nothing.
My mother calls me her "zero to one-hundred" child. It may take me forever to get something done, but once the fire is lit, it stays lit.

Then I had my first son in 2008, and I found my fire. I wanted to be able to show my son that you can do anything if you just want it enough, and work hard enough for it.
I dreamed of becoming an author.
From this desire arose a drive to complete a story that I'd been trying to write for the past several years. Characters that I'd created in 2001 on the drawing page (because I draw as well) begged for attention, especially one very insistent male toon.

I wrote something mostly to completion; something with fields of silvery purple grass, an impossibly massive tree, and four-legged creatures with attitudes, all of this set in some kind of alternate dimension.
I wasn't happy with it, and wrote it again. Still wasn't happy with that version, because the female protagonist was so whiny that I couldn't stand her.

So I rewrote it again.

I decided that the story had to be dynamic, yet realistic; challenging, yet relate-able. Above all, the pace had to flow from one plot point to the next, all the while keeping things quick and devastating, yet with a hopeful undertone. Finally, two rewrites, countless drafts, and four and a half years later, I feel that the story is everything that I've ever wanted it to be.
I am proud of what it has become.

Time to send it out into the world to fly.