Adventures in Blogging?

I'm a Noob.

For those of you who don't know, noob means a newbie, a brand new, out of the box, completely inexperienced, emotionally naked as the day you were born, new.

As a kid I never thought to myself "When I grow up I want to be a successful novelist and, what the heck, let's throw in blog writing for good measure." I didn't say that until I was an adult, but more on that later.

Nope, when I was a kid my aspirations were to play softball on the US Olympic Team, chase tornadoes, and generally be outside whenever it was lightning.

I did always have an active imagination. I could come up with any game to play, entertain myself off in la-la land and come up with any tale that would absolve me of any wrongdoing.

From the time I was a kid I was a reader and lover of books. My mother, on more than one occasion, was afraid I would perish in my sleep under the inevitable avalanche of hard cover children's books I insisted on stacking at the foot of my bed.

Later, I couldn't get my hands on enough Fear Street books to keep me satisfied. I would quickly devour every page of the book with the glossy image of a terrified girl on the cover.

In college I was introduced to the historical romance novel, my gateway drug. This would eventually lead to a hardcore habit of Paranormal and Urban Fantasy reads. I haven't given up on historical romance, its still a good fix, I've just come a long way from where I started. I'd like to say I can quit whenever I want to but I'm not going to kid myself. I got it bad. I can blame my mom for this one. Sorry mom, she introduced me to the romance novel section of the bookstore in what was most likely an attempt at keeping me from reading the Fear Street Saga for the 23rd time. Ahh my first trilogy, memories...

Anyway, after I had a few years and a couple dozen historical romance novels under my belt I started to think of stories I would like to read. It started with me guessing how the author was going to end the story from a particular point (I do this with movies too). Then, I started to think well this is how I would end the story. I even looked into writing to a few of my favorite authors at the time to pitch my ideas. (Like successfully published authors needed my ideas). I then scrapped the thought because she probably wouldn't write it the way I wanted it and leave me horribly disappointed reading the mutilated remains of my idea.

Not that any of the authors I was thinking of would have done a bad job writing it, it just wouldn't have been what I was thinking of. It wouldn't have been mine.

The my father asked, "Why don't you write it?" So encouraging.

My first reaction to that was, yeah right, sure, then after that I'll cure cancer and bring peace to the Middle East.

I couldn't write a book! ... could I?

I spent a long time mulling it over in my head. But the one story didn't stay one story. Soon, idea after idea kept slamming into me, hitting me like the bolt of lightning I'm sure to catch for real one of these days. It was as if I was being possessed by characters who wanted to tell me their stories and show me what was happening to them. It was like a dream. You weren't really sure how it started or how it was going to end but you just knew things about what was going on at that moment.

These things kept building and building. More scenes, more characters. Before I knew it I was getting stuff on paper and I had the outline for a book. Not the book that first popped into my head all those years ago. That one is still hanging around in my bank but a different character decided to push her way to the front of my mental line.

So this brings me back to being a noob. Here I am, a 30 year old meteorologist working in a job that I enjoy, with a wonderfully supportive husband and 2 great kids.

I never thought I would add writer to that list. But here I am trying. I have no idea what I'm doing or if I will ever be successful at it. There will likely be some ups and some downs, and a few laughs along the way.

I can't be the only person out there in the same boat. So I was thinking I'll blog about it and let you join me on my adventures in writing my first novel, among other things.

And who knows, if I actually manage to get this thing down on paper and to a point where I feel I can let anyone other than myself into my little fantasy world. I might be willing to share some of it here as well.

Wish me luck. I'm jumping off the diving board into the deep end of shark infested waters. Its scary, its exciting, and I'm not sure I'll survive but at least I can say I gave it a try before I became Jaws' late night snack!