Nearly six years ago, on a similarly cold, snowy day, a story came to me as I took the train to work. I started writing snippets of dialogue, moments in the story, completely out of context. By the time I finally sat down to make sense of all the scraps of paper, I ended up with a book I felt just barely brave enough to submit to a few contests.  This entire process took well over a year.

I received tons of constructive criticism and kept working. I trained myself to write a book from start to finish, not picking out interesting pieces here and there, and finished a re-write and a sequel. Then I discovered Camp Nanowrimo and trained myself to type a story, instead of writing it long-hand first, and considerably sped up my production time to just over a month per first draft.

I’m now on the verge of releasing the first book in my series; something I couldn’t have even imagined doing when I started. I have so many stories to tell (at least four in the True North series) and so many dreams I want to accomplish (starting with leaping in self-publishing) in 2015. This simple hashtag reminds me to keep working, every day, no matter what.  I love that daily encouragement.