I did something momentous yesterday: I gathered most of the things I’ve written in the past 15 to 20 years into one app.

This included all my shitty first draft novels, half-baked story concepts and other, mostly sci-if and fantasy ideas.

When I was done, I knew I wasn’t finished yet, as I didn’t include my blog post as I still have to go through my archives and sort them.

When I was done adding all my writing, I thought it would be fun to do a word count.

When I saw 2 million, I felt tears streaming down my face, and for the first time in my life I really felt like a writer.

2 million words of mostly fiction.

2 million words shaping dreams and ideas and stories I had almost forgotten, of poetry so long unread that I had to remind myself that I wrote the words I thought beautiful.

And all that I’m left with is the yearning to bring a lot of these projects to light.

I want to add all blog posts and see if I can turn some of the series into a book. And I want to see what adding the blog posts will do to my total word count. Given that I’ve blogged for 13 years, that could easily be a million words as well!

I want to edit some of my fantasy short stories and submit them.

I want to edit a novel I started in 2007.

In short: I want to be a writer.

No.

I AM a writer.

My next step?

I want to be a traditionally published author.

Time to pull up my sleeves and start editing.

I can’t wait!