I had a dream

When I was a teenager I really wanted to be a writer and get published.

I loved to read and after you have read so much you get your own ideas to write about. Of course these ideas were naive, but I did try though. I wrote several short stories and and poems, the latter was mainly just to express myself and the inner feelings I had about the universe. However I never got to the state of being published.

True, two of my short stories were published in an online magazine and a few poems have traveled in newspapers (part of one of them was even on a poster of an event), but that was not publishing. It was not enough.

So as the years passed, the dream died.

I still wrote time to time when I had the mood. I loved to write. The biggest problem was that my inspiration did not care about different genres. My writings just came as they wanted to come and it is difficult to publish a story in genre specific area where you just do not really fit in.

I knew that some of my stories and poems had made people smile at least or made them think about life in a different way. So writing and sharing them was in a way still full-filling.

In recent years however the dream started to remind itself.

People started forwarding me information about writing competitions etc. I was in awe. I wrote a few stories just to try out if I still had the skill. I did, but it still did not fit the picture.

Then there was a request to write a personal story about the experiences of improv. I did it and they liked it. The dream came back. I had a few calls with the editor to improve the text.

Then I received a proposal to write a myth about a location. It took me quite a lot of time to do it, but I got something.

They did not like it so much. They did not want it. They suggested to send it to an online magazine. I did. They did not like it either. (to be honest, it was about history and I suck at history... so I understand why they did not want it)

Also the improv thing had disappeared. After so much communication there suddenly was none.

But the dream was back.
It was awake.
It wanted to be heard.

So after reading a Prachett's book (one of the many I have) during my vacation while having a fever (37.8 C) I started writing. It was just coming out of me. As if a small kid in my mind had stood up and said "I would like to get my crayons back, thank you!"

It just poured out and did not stop.
I did not really have any control over it.

I was shocked when I went over 10 000 words. It was already the longest fictional thing I had written (thesis was not fictional) and I enjoyed it. I could not believe it while it was happening and I did not know what was going to happen next in the story - I wrote it because I wanted to know. It was coming out of my mind bit by bit and only after writing a new section I figured out what was going to be the next thing.

Amanda Palmer described the creation process as Collect - Connect - Share and the first two steps were fully at work. I pulled in some jokes, some characters I had in D&D game, some thoughts ... etc. It was just coming so naturally and taking over my thought process whenever I had some free time and often even when I didn't.
  
I sent the first few chapters to a few friends.
They liked it - one of them called it Pratchett fan fiction, that was not a bad thing.

Then the writing went slower. I could not create so much every day. I was thinking 
on the plot and how to put it together. It was less on inventing with crayons and more on finding patterns you could use.

Then in the last weekend all the pieces suddenly fitted together. I had arrived at the end.

I had finished  the story with over 22 000 words and in English, that is not my native language.

I shared the news to get some test readers.

Now they are reading.

I don't know if it is any good. I don't know if it is funny (it as fun to write it at least) I don't know what will come out of it, but the dream is still there and in a way I feel that I owe it. I owe it to all the authors who have inspired me over the years that I use the inspiration.The turtle moves and I bow in front of it.