Growing up, I saw Virginia Slims commercials on TV. I can’t even fathom those commercials being on TV today. Can you imagine?
Anyway, that jingle was in my head this past weekend, when during a procrastination tactic, I decided to open a file that sparked my writing journey. The file contained my first “focused” novel. I’ve written other “novels” if I can really call them that—but this was the first one I really worked on seriously. I had just graduated college and couldn’t pay someone to give me a job, so I had a lot of free time on my hands. But even after I got my first techy geek job, I finished the novel. I even remember going to Kinkos and getting the novel bound—yes, it was that serious. My boyfriend at the time started calling me Lil’ Terry—as in Terry McMillan.
How time can change a perspective. I actually cringed reading parts of the novel. 300 pages of bad writing. I have come a LONG way in my craft. Still improving and growing of course, but sometimes you have to see where you started to give yourself credit to where you are.
It has always been my intention to rewrite this novel. I’m really trying not to think about this “other” novel while writing the current one—it’s like infidelity. But I would like to rewrite it one day because the subject matter of social class and teens is something I find intriguing.
