Something You Might Not Know About Me Is...

I'm watching Home Improvement right now. Jill and Tim are at a marriage workshop, and the counselor guy told them all to start a sentence with "something you might not know about me is..." and then finish it with something that the others might not know.

I'm bored and in need of post-fodder. So I'll finish that sentence:

Something you might not know about me is that I secretly love reading stupid dating articles in those teen magazines. It's my guilty pleasure. :D Never use the advice -- don't want a boyfriend. But I love reading it all.

Also, since the other day I asked how you all decided that you wanted to be writers, I'll answer that question, too.

Let's see. I think the first time I decided that I wanted to be a writer was in fifth grade. I'd always loved telling stories, but I hated writing (gasp!). I couldn't stand it -- but that was mainly because the only "writing" I'd ever done were those stupid "what I did this summer" essays and book reports.

But then Ms. Morris (God, she had to be one of the best teachers I've ever had) told us to write an essay about writing. She said to explain why we liked or didn't like it. Mine was called, predictably, "I Hate Writing." To this day I remember my reasons: because you can't just write what you want, it's hard, and it takes too long.

But when I finished that essay, I realized something: I'd just finished writing the essay that I wanted to write. It wasn't hard. It was fun and it didn't take four hours.

For the rest of that month, I threw myself into our writing assignments with zeal, relishing the fact that they were made up of MY words. MY words. MINE.

Shortly after that, I picked up a book called The School Story, by Andrew Clements. If you've never read this book and you're a writer, go read it. It's about this girl, Natalie, who writes a book. Her friend Zoe is determined to see it published and becomes Natalie's literary agent. Natalie's mother is an editor at a publishing house in New York, and they submit it to her under Natalie's pen name and refuse to back down until it's published.

I love that book. It's the story that really drove it home: the fact that, hey, I can do this. I can write. Maybe, someday, I can find my Zoe and we can get my books published.

I started my first novel the next year. I began to hate it, so I started another. Over the next two years, I started and threw away more stories than I can count.

But then, as the tried-and-true cliche goes, I started going through a really rough patch. I was bullied in school because I'd just skipped a grade and I was "that new kid" and I was, frankly, an easy target. I wanted out.

And then I had the dream that turned into my first book. That was The Family Secret.

I worked on that for a good long while before abandoning it after the second draft (I'll go back to it someday, probably). I put it in the filing cabinet and started The Surface of the Deep for NaNoWriMo. And the rest, as they say, is history.

And that's my story! :D So, I suppose, the first time I realized I wanted to be a writer was in fifth grade. Partly due to Ms. Morris, partly due to Andrew Clements, and partly due to my family for surrounding me with books, I became a writer.

Question for the comments:
What's something that we may not know about you?