Turning thirty means different things for different people. Some are scared of it, getting old. Others see it as their second twenties, but with more wisdom. And there’s a third group that mostly confused about how they should feel about thirty. I turned thirty today and I have no idea what it means to me, but I do know that the past decade has contributed the most to who I am today.
Life is nothing without its ups and downs. Highlights are earning a bachelor and a master degree, finding a full-time job, quitting said job, have stories and articles published, becoming a dog mom, and getting married. Low points are getting my chronic pain diagnosis, getting hit by a car and rejection letters. (I kept adding things to the highlights, which is a good sign.)
For my writing career, these were the years that I knew what kind of writing I wanted to do. During my years at the university, I received a lot of criticism on my writing. It wasn’t academic enough and I struggled with that the most when I was writing my master thesis. That was also the moment that the pain attacks began, so I was distracted most of the time as well. Academic writing wasn’t for me, especially in the humanities. The extra courses I picked during my bachelor were for the computer science, linguistics or history department. All of them were more relaxed about writing style. These were the subjects where I got high grades and also the subjects that still interest me to this day.
I still enjoyed writing during my university years. Most of my stories were beginnings or summaries of stories that would come to me at weird times. Those moments started in high school, but I never managed to quite finish a story. I wanted to develop my writing since I knew I was lacking skill. I started a blog about the games I played. I even started writing fanfiction for one of my favourite games, Guild Wars 2. The fanfics were probably the first real stories I finished.
Writing on my blog actually led to my first paid writing gig at MMOgames. I had a column about Guild Wars 2 for a while, but it was hard to keep up with my fulltime job and gaming. My continued struggle with chronic pain had me drained most of the days. I didn’t play enough to keep the column going. My involvement in the Guild Wars 2 community led to an invite for a short story in a fanzine for charity. Raven and I both worked on the fanzine with the wonderful Mel Sayre at the helm. It was a great project to work on with 70 other very talented people, artists and writers alike.
The job that I landed was much easier than I had anticipated and I managed to get my tasks done on time. I used the free time I had to do creative work. I wrote short stories and worked on a game design document. That’s where I got my energy from. My creative juices kept flowing and I needed an outlet, but once I opened the tap, they kept coming. Writing fiction (and using a fountain pen and paper specifically) had become therapeutic. If I wasn’t able to take that time for myself, I would have burned out. The nearly two-hour daily commute and the increasing stress from a management with no sense of leadership were enough for my health to become worse. Quitting was my best option. It was one of the hardest decisions to make and also the easiest one. Health comes first. My husband told me to take this chance and pursue my dream of a writing career. I launched Narratess while I was still working and wrote one article a week to post.
One and a half year later and I’m still blogging here. My selection of short stories is being read by the first readers and I hope that soon I can share more information about my first book release! I’ve used my twenties to realise what I wanted to write and do my words to get to a level worthy of publishing. My first book release will be in my thirties and it won’t be the last. I’m sure I’ll need a few years to learn more about publishing and book marketing, but I’ve got time to learn.
