A Secretive Post for a Friday

As many of you know, I make my living as an editor/writer. The editor part is at a publishing company, and the writer part is via freelance jobs for various magazines, etc.
I went to college and graduated from a Print Journalism program, as I wanted to be a reporter. I did work as one at a paper back in Alberta, which I loved, but full time writing gigs (at least at a newspaper) are hard to come by. It's the sort of field where people stick around till they die.

All my life I have loved the written word - the way it looks on paper, the way words can make you feel, make a point, tell a story. I love proofreading; finding misspellings, grammatical errors, making necessary changes between Canadian and American spellings, all of it. I am a complete word nerd. And yes, I do occasionally make mistakes myself, so those of you (ahem, Reggie and Judy) that are worried about making errors when leaving me comments, fear not, they happen to the best of us.

Like many writers, I have often dreamed of writing a book, and one day becoming a best-selling author. And really, who wouldn't want that? I would love to be the next J.K. Rowling...I could definitely stand being a bajillionaire.

One of the most supportive people in my life is Monica (the Bahama Mama). She supports me in everything I do, but has always held the firm belief that one day I will write a book so incredible, that half the world will know who I am. She thinks I should write children's books because of my wild imagination, teen novels because she feels that my emotional self could write great tear-jerkers for girls, an autobiography because she thinks I'm hilarious and that people would want to read it.

Now I'm not so sure about all those things, but I do know that having a cheerleader like that on my side makes me really want to do those things, partially because I want to make her proud of me.

Over Christmas she asked me how a particular writing project was going - one that I have been working on for several years - and I told her it was just over halfway done. She was thrilled.

Her sisters were over while we were talking about it, and joined in on the conversation. We began talking about all the different types of writing I could do, and eventually got on the topic of one form I had never seriously considered before. Monica was so excited that she was standing up in the living room basically yelling at me "Al!!! You should totally do that! Can you imagine how much fun that would be?!? You have the perfect mind for that kind of writing! You have to do it, I'd be your biggest fan!!! Okay, that's it, you're doing it!!!"

Then we all sat around and laughed about it, because it sounded so ridiculous...but then I started thinking about it. I could do it. I really could. And she's talked to me seriously twice about it since that initial conversation.

I started doing some research about it on my own, and decided yesterday that yes, I'm going to do it. The husband and I talked it over yesterday afternoon, and he agreed that it would be pretty amazing.

So...I've given myself until I return to work to get it done. That's four months. I'm holding myself to it. And when it's all done, I'll share it with you. And if things work out, I'll send you an autographed copy :)