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| An Addictive Personality - By: Alexandria Hathaway |
When I was 12 years old I set the goal for myself to write a book. I had a lot of different ideas and wrote many of them down... later to be forgotten about and then lost. I would write things down, set it in a pile of papers, and say "I'll get to this later." Sadly, the pile mysteriously vanished before 'later' came.
The older I got, the more intricate my ideas became. I began to have projects at school that exercised my writing skills. I wrote poetry, short story pieces, beginnings to chapter books... I began posting some of my work on to a site known as "deviantart." There, people began to give me feedback: They liked what I wrote.
I kept writing bits and pieces for deviantart and still do today.
Come the time I became 18 I started a new ritual the night before my birthday. I would lay down on my bed, stare up at the bunk on top of mine, and go "I'm not ready to be __ years old. I haven't done anything yet."
Of course, when I started this ritual I was still in high school, but for some reason I thought I should already be world famous or something. Actually, I thought that I would be moved out of my parents house or planning to anyways. Maybe going off to a college dorm. That wasn't the case.
It would be 2 more years before I moved out.
The night I turned 20 I had an even bigger "haven't done anything" breakdown than I had the last two years. I was stressed, scared, and anxious. I began texting a friend about how absolutely... frightened and not ready I was to be 20. He told me I was already technically 20... minus one day.
The problem this year was that I had tried things already... and failed. Not just work related things, but projects too. Nothing seemed to work out quite right. I had even gone so far as to create a professional page on facebook for myself as an entrepreneur. At least, that's what it started out as.
In the back of my mind (and sometimes even the forefront) I remembered the love of writing, the drive to create a beautiful piece with words... I wanted it, needed it... And so I put "aspiring author" on all of my social media.
Back to the night of February 16th... I'm in the kitchen now, wallowing over tea and texting my best friend. I mention to him that I haven't written a book yet and how that one day did matter. This is what he responded with:
"If you can write a book in one day, be my guest."
Believe it or not, that was the most inspiring thing I'd heard in a long time. While the conversation drifted to things like "do you get enough sleep?" my mind was drifting towards writing.
I decided then and there that I was done with everything else, that I would write a book and become an author.
I'm not going to lie, it was a couple months before I picked up steam in that regards. In fact, the real change didn't happen until I moved. I moved in with my boyfriend in an apartment in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was beautiful up here, trails all around, a college nearby with an open library... I loved it.
I started going after my writing, slowly but surely. Then one day I remembered I had a piece on my computer that I hadn't worked on in awhile. It was about 3,000 words, had no title, and was based off something of friend of mine from high school told me.
I worked on it. And worked on it. And worked on it. When I thought I was done I sent it off to some of my friends to proofread. And then I worked on it some more. Then came the cover art finding and the learning how to self publish. Let me tell you, Amazon makes it easy. I'll be going through other platforms soon enough though.
So what did this piece turn in to? It turned into "An Addictive Personality." Now found on Amazon with the name "Alexandria Hathaway" right next to, in parentheses, right under the title: The word 'Author.'
-Alexandria Hathaway
An Addictive Personality: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MSBAK9K/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AlexandriaMazareth
Twitter: @AlexandriaMWolf
Deviantart: http://littlewolfdreamer.deviantart.com/
