Do you ever read something you wrote and think “Oh my gosh, this would make an amazing book?” I love to read through my old journal and blog posts and inevitably by the end of the reminiscing, I have a new file on my computer titled “Novel?”
I’ve written about my life, in one way or another, since about fifth grade. It started in a little penguin-shaped journal, in which I documented the first of our many, many trips to Hawaii (my home). This journal also held my thoughts about my favorite TV shows at the time: Hannah Montana and Friends.
Then it became all about The Sims. That’s right. I was one of those girls who would spend hours on end creating families with my crush-of-the-moment. The families always needed biographies! (Side note: Not too long ago, I found out that my mom actually filed away one of those stories…embarrassing.)
As I hit my teenage years, it was all about fights. Fights with parents, fights with friends, imaginary fights with parents and/or friends, etc. I would email these big, long, rants to myself (and, admittedly, sometimes a friend or two…) so they would never be lost. I wanted to have a reason to be upset when I felt like it.
Eventually, I did level off somewhat and started writing about more normal things. Most of the time, it was at the end of a day where a million little things amazed me and made me feel overwhelmingly grateful. I figured that those things were what I should be focusing on when I want to be introspective, not the negative things.
One Direction was in Minnesota for a concert a few days ago and it triggered my memories from the weekend of the Chicago concert I attended last fall. I knew that I had written about it, so I went into my journal and read the very lengthy passage. Then I started reading the next passage (from nearly four months later) and those magical little words crossed my mind:
This could be a book.
So, I’m indulging myself. I’m actually retyping it all and letting myself work through this. If it works, yay! If not, I have another document to add to my “Novels?” folder.
Keep Calm & Carrie On 