The Story Begins

It all begins with an idea. A prompt that makes one think, maybe I can do this.

My story began in the summer of 2017. I was a fresh graduate from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. I had my master’s degree in hand and was ready to conquer the world, but like so many others, the job market didn’t want me. I was the unholy trifecta of no experience, over educated, and the holder of a very specific skill set that didn’t translate well to other jobs. Over the course of 8 months, I had applied to countless positions, both inside and outside my field of study, and desperation was beginning to set in. I was about to get kicked off my father’s health insurance (whoever made that law was enemy #1 at the time) and my student loans were about to come due (And believe me, those loans were substantial).

And so, I became the literal embodiment of Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice. No money. No prospects. And I was beginning to become a burden to my parents.

But this period of my life was also a blessing. I had plenty of time to read, I became a house-daughter (it’s like a housewife but cooler just don’t ask me how), and I began to dream. I was able to take stock of my life from multiple angles and wonder what it is I had the potential to become. Since the time I’d entered high school, it was drilled into me that I had to go to a good college because without a degree I’d never make enough money to survive, and when I finally made it into said college, society said I had to find my husband while I was there and then immediately graduate with a decent career already lined up.

None of that happened.

At first, as I sat on my lonely couch in the living room, drinking copious amounts of Earl Grey tea like Jean Luc Picard, I thought maybe I was broken. Maybe I had done something wrong and that’s why nothing had turned out like I’d imagined. I began looking at all these different paths I could take and none of them seemed quite right.

Then one night, I had a dream.

Yes, a literal dream. It was of a story, playing out in technicolor behind my slumbering eyelids. I woke up and remembered every bit of it. And like Stephanie Meyer’s famed (or infamous depending on how you look at it) telling of how she came up with the idea for Twilight, I thought maybe I can do that, too.

So that afternoon, after finishing up all my house-daughter chores and while dinner bubbled on the stove, I began to write. It was choppy and very sloppy. My prologue was 30 pages of information dumping and the concept of showing instead of telling wasn’t even a blip on my radar. In a word, it was terrible.

But taking that first step allowed me to wonder.

I thought of what it could look liked if I wrote stories and published books. I thought of how my days could progress as I typed up fantastical tales with both loss and hope. I thought of how wonderful it would be to greet my future readers at signings and conferences, laughing with my fellow writers over coffee as we shared our latest book ideas.

I fell in love. With writing. With everything that came along with it (minus social media but that’s a topic for another day). The image I had conjured in my mind of what this life could look like was intoxicating, like the sweetest of wines, and it knocked me off my feet.

But reality hit me harder.

Those bills were coming due sooner than any book of mine could hit shelves and so I set aside my 30 page prologue and got a job. Now, it wasn’t all woes and tears. I landed the job of my dreams as a Digital Forensic Intelligence Analyst and even five years later, I still love what I do, but the love of writing never quite left me. It was always a shadow that haunted the back of my mind, reminding me that the story was still there.

That it was still waiting to be finished.

And so, I began again.