Purpose

My writing is not just something I do. I don't get random urges to write, sit down for ten minutes, type out a hundred words, and slip back into the rest of my life. My writing is my life. It is my calling.

 



I have been writing ever since I could read. That was at age 3.



I was a naughty child. Like really. My parents always planned on having ten kids. I was two years old, my Mum had just had my little brother, and every day when Daddy came home from work she would shove me in his arms and go cry. She said she never wanted to have any more kids. I was bad. On purpose.

By the time I was three, Mommy had almost given up on me, so she went to talk to the pastor's wife about what to do.

The woman's advice?

I was bored.

She couldn't have been more right.

I've never been brilliant. But I understand things pretty quickly. And everything fascinates me.

So the pastor's wife {I'd give her a name if I knew it...} suggested Mommy start teaching me how to read.

What a joke, Mum thought. She's three! But she tried it.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I sucked it up like a lollipop. To have the world open up before me like that, adventures and people and places...things my little mind had never dreamed of...it was amazing. In every true form of the word. I could read my children's Bible before I turned four. And started down the path of my future: books and books and more books. I just read and read, everything I could get my hands on, no matter what it was. And I stopped getting into mischief. {What a relief! Mommy was able to have at least five of those ten kids!}

When I was five I created my first "real" book. I was so pleased with it! I kept it tucked away in a special drawer and didn't let anyone touch it. A few months later I made a second one for my dolls. They ought to have some books too, eh! I still have them.

 



Even though I liked those books, they were not much and I knew it. So when we were visiting some relatives in Canada one summer {I was seven} I stapled a bunch of paper together and began a life's history of, well...me. I even illustrated it! It makes me laugh so hard. But I was proud of it. I carried it with me everywhere. Quite literally. And enlisted several of my Daddy's cousins {who must have thought I was cute to have been crazy enough to help} to write a few pages to my dictation. Oh, I was a real author!!!

At ten I began to write a novel. Something beautiful and massive and purposeful. I found a pink notebook with silver flowers on it, pressed the title on the cardboard cover, and started out. {You should look at the spelling. It is atrocious! Eeeek! Scary!} I even finished the book this time. It made me super proud. I had every girl in church reading it.

{My books}

 

When I turned eleven I was given my first computer. Daddy is a teacher and the school he worked for at the time gave it to him. We already had one so he gave it to me. It was one of those old yellow ones with the huge monitor and floppy disc inserts. I embarked on a new faze of writing. About my second infatuation of life. Horses. I wrote an entire 171 page novel about a horse {named Tulip...but of course, she had lots of names in the story.... her true name was Tulip}. Unfortunately, the computer was destroyed on our trip from Oregon to Missouri and I lost all but the first five chapter of that book. It still breaks my heart...

During all this, I was still enraptured in books. In my ninth grade year {I was 13 and now in Missouri} I read over 300 books. Only about 90 of them were for school. It was the winter of 2007 and we had an ice storm. That meant no outside play and I was buried deep in Beric the Briton by G.A. Henty. And it suddenly struck me. All his works were written for and about boys. Every single one. He was my favorite author ever at the time. I'd read every readable copy of his works we owned {about 100, but 10 or so are antiques that fall apart if you pick them up). But something was seriously lacking. Though there usually ended up being a girl in the story, they were still not much. So, I sat back, pulled out a piece of notebook paper, and wrote out a story idea almost identical to Beric but with the main character...well, you guessed it. A girl. And the idea's didn't stop there. Once I put my head to it, I just wrote and wrote out idea after idea, filling up pretty much every angle and culture of history. Ancient Rome. Alexander the Great. The Pharaoh's of Egypt. World War II. The French Revolution. It didn't matter. It was history and it was writing and it was girls. I ended up starting a novel set on the Oregon trail. After a hundred or so pages, I was revamped.

I've been around Christians all my life. I became a believer and was baptized when I was 6 because of some important things that happened to me at that time. And I understood the Redemption of Christ fully. Still, he never really came into my books {The Princess Travels did have God bring my main character back into focus} in a true spiritual way. We were watching some documentaries for school about making Christ the center of your life, finding his purpose and calling for what you do, and doing whatever you do for him.

So I did a 360 to take in what I had written and began tapping away at another book, a decidedly Christian book. I wanted to change the world for God. I still do. Eh he...I always was a dreamer. I started fresh on a new book, combining two ideas and going back to my original Beric inspiration {the book is still on my favorites list, just so you know; I think I'll do a review on it here sometime}. By the time I turned 14, I had a novel and a half in the making. And I have been writing it ever since. It has gone from a girl-Henty to a Mara, Daughter of the Nile {review HERE} to a completely-and-only-Caitria-style in the last five almost six years. But, at long last, it is almost done.

And all of that was to bring you to the point of this. {No, it was not just a spill out my life story post. ;) }


I was writing on Chapter 15 this week. My Daddy is my primary editor right now, my sister Brisa next, and friends Lauren and Cait next. Various friends have read, critiqued, and looked over it, but still, Daddy is my best editor. Because he looks for the deeper things. The meaning and reason behind everything, the actions and motives and desires of my characters. You know, the things that make them real. Anyway, Chapter 15 {entitled Empty} is the climax emotionally for one of my two main characters. There are a some things few authors have attempted to tackle. The real heartaches, meanings, and desires of life. Things that the world just can't understand...without God. I'm not going to spoil anything, but Daddy inspired me to enhance the reality of it. The absolute emptiness of life. Because it matters.

Anyway, this whole post was to get to that little paragraph and somehow it didn't seem to do much, because I won't spoil what exactly I mean...



There are a lot of things I want to do with my life. There are a lot of things I love and tons of stuff I intend to do. But this {my writing} is something I know God has brought me to. And no matter where I go or what else I do, it will be something that will be used to bring him glory and show the power of his love. For me and for you.