12/20/14

When I Grow Up

Well, hello.

Yes, I'm still alive. I'm one semester away from graduation, and I'm still alive. I've been to Germany and back. I've been in a chemistry lab and answered my chemistry professor's questions about my book, all the while verifying that I'm wearing safety goggles, pants, and closed-toed shoes. I've made it through what I think will have been my hardest semester and still passed all my classes. In May, I will be college graduate with a degree in physics.

And I still want to be a writer when I grow up.

Yep, that happened.

Oh, I considered grad school. Considered it hard, especially since I wanted to go back to Germany and make solar cells, because making solar cells is what I did all summer, and it's fun.

Then I realized that grad school meant, um, more school, and I'm done with that, thanks.

So I started thinking that I would staff at a nonprofit in Austin, a nonprofit that has more or less been my home base while I've been at school here. But every time I planned out what that life would look like, there was one thing important to me: How much time will I have to write?

Until I decided: I'm going home. I'm going home, and I'm pursuing writing, because that is the risk I choose to take. Not-writing is what I will regret most if I choose some other path. {Of course, I will mesh this crazy leap with something like a job. Don't freak out.}

It was over Thanksgiving that I came to this conclusion, over Thanksgiving that I sat down to see what I had in my writing arsenal after no writing for months. Turns out, I had a three-book "trilogy." I've written parts of it over the past 2 years, but this was the first time I realized...I have something here. While I've been turning in homework and serving organizations, I've also been creating.

I tell people that it's a book about space aliens. "The Space Alien Book," I tell them, so that they know which one I'm talking about. But it's not really. I mean, there are space aliens, but it's not their book.

It's a book about a rebel heroine named Mara Wade.
A city looks to her for hope. Now it's time for her to leave.

Yeah, I'm just a little bit excited.

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