Goober Writers Anonymous--Me

I'm so glad everyone has shown such interest in this group!  There is nothing better than being able to share all our mistakes with friends.  I can't even tell you how much I've learned over the years just by listening to people who had to learn the hard way.

Now, because I'm the organizer of this group, I thought I'd start it all off with a little tale of my own.  It was really hard to narrow it down, I must admit.  I've made a LOT of mistakes since deciding I wanted to be a writer.  A lot.  And they never seem to end.  No matter how much research I do, or how hard I try to prepare myself, I always seem to make at least one little flub.

But the story I'm going to tell you today wasn't exactly a little mistake.  I actually consider it the most devastating, life-altering mistake I could have made.

I think most of us have this one thing in common:  we all excelled in our creative writing classes, whether in middle school, high school, or college.  Well, when I was in school, I was pretty sure I was alone in my abilities.  I know--arrogant.  But hear me out.  I was always the best in my class, my English teachers never failed to praise me in whatever I did, and though I received A's in all my work, I knew it wasn't even close to what I could do.  And there's the problem.  I never once pushed myself.  I was an extremely lazy student.  I did well without trying.  I'm not trying to brag here.  I actually consider what I did to be the stupidest thing a person could ever do.

I had a dream growing up to be one of the youngest published authors ever.  Did I research this?  No.  Did I have a clue who was the youngest author ever?  No.  I just decided I wanted to be a teenage writer, so I sat down and tried to write a book.  I'd always had a passion for writing even before I really knew how to write.  I would scribble lines and pretend they were words (with pictures included, of course) and feel so fulfilled when I stapled my pages together.  I knew I was destined to be a writer, it was just a matter of sitting down and finishing something.

Sadly, though, I didn't put one ounce more effort into it than I did my work for school.  I just assumed that if I was so much better than everyone in my classes, then I had to be as equally better than everyone else in the country (and therefore, other writers).  I deluded myself into thinking this for years.  When I look back at what I wrote in school, I want to slap myself.  It was crap.  Straight up horse manure.  I can't even believe my teacher would give me an A for the stuff I gave him.  And the sad thing is, I knew at the time that it was crap and I was still happy with it.

But that's not all.  Oh no, that is. not. all.

You know how I mentioned I failed to do any research?  Well, when I started writing (half-way seriously), I tried to mimic the books I read in school.  In other words, I wanted to write something similar to a 100 year old classic, not something people today wanted to read.  I just didn't know any better.  I didn't know what modern books were like.  Which is odd, because I read a few, but they were still adult and it didn't really hit me that they were much different from the classics.  I had no idea that I should have been writing YA.  I didn't even know something like that existed!  I skipped right over it in my reading.  So I wasted years trying to write stories about people doing situations I had no clue about.  I was a teen trying to write for adults.  It was a disaster.  But I didn't even know it was a disaster until I finished my first book.

In fact, I didn't know it was a disaster until I was half-way through with ELEMENTAL and realized what I was really writing was a YA and trying to push it off as adult.  My rewrites were intensive and even now, I'm trying to catch up with my YA reading.  I wasted a good 13 years of my life because I was lazy and didn't do an ounce of research.  When I think about all I've learned in just one year, I'm disgusted with myself.  I could have been at the point I am now when I was 15 if I'd only taken this more seriously.

So there's my big goober mistake.  And let me tell you, I feel like one big goober.  I still make mistakes and I have LOTS more stories to share, but next week Carol Riggs will be sharing one of her flubs with all of us!  Make sure you check it out!  And if you want to join GWA, just leave a comment below with your email address so I can contact you about a guest blog post.

~Emily White