Day One

Well hello there and welcome to my new blog. I've been talking for months about starting a blog up, and I finally decided to just bite the bullet and do it. Please bear with me, because I might not be all that interesting for a while. I promise I'll get better at this.

Let's see, I suppose I should start off with a little introduction to myself. My name is Joanna. I am almost 34 years old, and I'm not entirely sure where my 30s are going. These past few years have been a whirlwind. Three years ago, I bought a horrendous condo in foreclosure with my then-boyfriend. It's now a lovely condo, thanks to about twelve weeks of remodeling and lots of help from friends & family. The following year we got engaged. Last year we were married. Now, things are dying down, and my husband and I spend our time hanging out with our cats and not really doing too much. I rather enjoy our boring life together. He's truly my best friend. And I apologize for that out of nowhere mushiness.

Last year was a wonderful year and a terrible year all rolled into one. Planning a wedding was one of the most fun things I've ever gotten to do. Stressful, of course, but fun. I'm lucky enough to be somewhat ridiculously organized, so it wasn't all that difficult for me. And the wedding day itself was completely perfect. However, while my personal life was going fab, last year was a bad, bad year at work. A year that made me question why on earth I was willing to go through life not really doing what I wanted to be doing. Don't get me wrong- I like my job for the most part. I work with some outstanding people and the work itself can be challenging and somewhat interesting. But anyone who knows me knows that I've always wanted to write books.

I've been writing stories since around the fifth grade. I remember bringing them in for classmates to read and the feelings of excitement and pride when they asked to read more. Writing was my escape throughout high school, when I was a miserable teenager wishing to live anyone's life but her own (as if I really had it that bad). I have a whole crate of notebooks with handwritten stories in them still living at my parent's house somewhere. One of these days I need to get those and see if there's anything worth salvaging.

The story I'm working on now is called In My Mind's Eye. It's a young adult novel about a teenage girl whose parents were murdered when she was five years old, the way she's dealt with the murders, and how her life changes when a new boy arrives at her high school. It's about being different, falling in love, and awesome friendships. In a nutshell, anyway. I obviously don't want to give too much away. I'm almost at the halfway point- I have just over 40,000 words, and I'd like to get to about 100,000 before I start doing the major revising. It's been slow going at times; I started it last year and then with all the wedding planning, got sidetracked for a while. It's actually based off a short story I wrote in high school. I changed a lot, added new characters, etc, but it's coming along pretty nicely now. I'm excited to write it and can't wait to share it with people. Some people have already gotten a sneak preview, but I expect that by the time I'm finished it'll be a lot different from those first few rough drafts.

So, to close out my first blog post ever, what you should expect to see here: Snippets from In My Mind's Eye that I'm especially proud of, boring stuff about my everyday life, maybe some fun pictures here and there...I don't know. I'm just gonna roll with it. Thanks in advance for reading this! I hope it's going to be at least somewhat enjoyable.