A Writing Journey - The Baby Years

Welcome, participants in the Author Blog Challenge and other readers, to my blog.

28 days to discover if I want to become an author, and learn how.

I normally have a "Sustainable Saturday" feature.  If you are looking for that feature, I published a post yesterday on a special store in Brooklyn (New York City).

Because of the Author Blog Challenge, which is taking place for 28 days in June, I will keep up my topic schedule days as much as possible,and still follow as many of the prompts of this challenge as possible.  I still want to publish my flower and wildflower photos too.  A pretty tall order!

 I have blogged for over three years now, daily for the past 13 plus months. What's next? I hope this challenge will help me answer this question.

For today, we are asked:  Describe your earliest memory of writing.  How did your writing habit/process/career develop?

My very earliest memory?  How about second grade?  No, I won't count the many hours I spent with plastic molded toy soldiers (World War II, Civil War, Cowboys and Indians), making up "movies" for them.  I never wrote the plots down.  I also remember making "comic" strips that passed through a paper TV screen. I also won't count the many hours I spent daydreaming that I worked at the Daily Planet alongside my heroine, Lois Lane.  I never did get into journalism.

No, I think it was when I was 10 or 11.  I loved superhero comics (Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and a host of other).  I decided to make up my own superhero comics.  The hero I created was "Cold Man",  He could freeze anything to near absolute zero.  I couldn't draw worth a whit, so I enlisted the help of a friend with artistic talent. She, in turn, suggested my next venture and my first actual manuscript:  The Birdmen of Zuma.  The Birdmen of Zuma were half man, half canary, and lived hidden away in the Canary Islands.  An American pilot crash landed near their city.

It went downhill from there.  Many adventures, just coincidentally, resembled similar adventures of  my beloved John Carter of Barsoom.  But it was a start.

My serious writing started (after I stopped writing all together in my early 20's) in April of 2009.  I was in my late 50's.  I started a blog inspired by an "eyewitness" (sort of) email I wrote the day of a mass murder in Binghamton, New York.

My writing habit developed by participating first in the 2011 WordCount Blogathon (31 daily posts, no skipping a day permitted), and then several rounds of the Ultimate Blog Challenge.  And then, I completed the 2012 WordCount blogathon.


I have the habit of daily writing, thanks to over 13 straight months of daily blogging.

I don't use a traditional writing process in the sense that I have never taken a writing course.  I do "prewrite" but not formally.  No one taught me these steps - I developed a rhythm on my own in my first months of blogging.  I've refined it over the years.   I do draft, revise, proofread and publish, usually taking at least 30 minutes with each post.  I sometimes prewrite, but if I research it is usually during the drafting phase.  I usually write in the early evening but that is more because of my Monday to Friday work schedule. (I have a 40 plus hour a week corporate job). Some of my posts seem to spring, fully formed, from my mind.  Most don't.

I don't have a writing career.  Yet. That's why I'm here.

I have no idea what to expect from this challenge.  What about you?