There's a lot of great stuff waiting beyond the fear...

I was asked to write an autobiography in 250 words or less.  That's a frightening thing to ask someone who prefers to concentrate on her characters.  But I pushed past the fear and am quite pleased with how it turned out.

It was a day just like any other.  Except it was completely different.  You see, The Writer hadn’t yet discovered that she was indeed a writer.  Her father read her bedtime stories every evening and on this day, she asked him the question that would change everything. 

“Where do stories come from?”

“The come from people.”, her father replied.

“Magic people?”

“No, regular people, like you and I.”

At that very moment, a tiny spark formed inside her heart.  Over the years, The Writer continued to read every single day and the spark grew.  Then, stories of her own came forward through the mists and were kept warm by that spark.  The Writer was sought out by others who had stories to tell but weren’t sure how.  So she helped them.  Sometimes the stories were only 10 seconds long, but she didn’t mind.  She wrote about all sorts of things.  Sometimes she didn’t know much about what she was asked to write, but she didn’t mind.  She loved doing research and learning new things.  All that mattered to The Writer was that she was writing and that the spark in her heart would always be there.