AWAS

Wondering what AWAS is? I bet you are! Its the name of my book! Yes you read that right my book. No it is not a book I am reading that I want to claim. It is a book that I am writing. I am not even halfway done, but I want to share the start of my journey in hopes to inspire someone else, and to re-inspire myself. AWAS was originally titled "Setting". Laugh it up I know what an original title. Well it was first titled that because that is where it started. It started as a "setting" exercise in my literature class my senior year of high school. I wanted to write about a sunrise. I drew the picture in my mind. Someone walking up a grassy hill with a crisp air blowing to watch the sunrise over the mountains. I included things such as the cold feeling of the dew on the grass, the little bit of warmth from that sun rising. I went with it, and played with a character.
I ended up having to do other writing exercise for that class, and just kept rolling with "Setting". Soon a story developed in my mind, and I fell in love with my main character. I wrote in my spare time, did character profiles, and started writing up plot twist. I was in love with the story I had created. At some point in my journey I stopped writing what I knew, and let the characters tell me their story. Call me crazy, but it is the truth. It has come to a point where I am no longer writing what I want, but what my characters want. Now that it is two years later from when I started, I have lots of hard work to show for it. I have 16,000 words, millions of scraps of papers with different things on it, family trees burned into my brain, and I constantly have something on my mind that has to do with "Setting". I have written in so many different places including Sheldon High school, my house, public parks, in the car on my way home from somewhere or on my way to California, on a lanai in Hawaii, and in Sunriver. I hope the list can keep going, and some day it will be even bigger I just know it.
Who knows if I will ever get it published, I want it to. However for now AWAS is just a dream that keeps me sane, and keeps me coming back to something I know. Sometimes when I am rereading a chapter or a paragraph it amazes me just how much I have written. Sometimes I will read something and literally laugh out loud because I think "Wow I wrote that, don't remember that but okay!" This is such a long journey. But I am so grateful for it. Its hard work, and I wished I worked harder on it!
In a year from now ask me how its going. I hope to say its finished.