A Little About Me

I started writing on my own when I was about fourteen. I had written stories before for school, but this one was the first novel I had decided to do without any outside pressures. Several years later, I read back to the beginning, figured out the story was a mistake, and dropped it then and there at 51,000 words.

Soon thereafter, I began to outline and write a new novel which ended up being titled Dreamsphere. My aim with the story was to improve on everything I had failed with in my first story, starting with characterization and working my way on through logical fallacies, parallelisms with my own life and on to plot. Thus, my main character was intentionally made everything I was not: dark-haired, middle-aged, and alcoholic.

A year and a half later, on August 3, 2008, the novel was completed at 78,000 words. I am currently working on the second draft.

As for my personal life, I live in a decent apartment with a roommate and my girlfriend of three years. I have two birds and a puppy named Melody.

I’ve worked as a lifeguard since I was sixteen, and I’ve never worked another job since. I like it too much. I enjoy helping people in any way I can, and a profession which gives me the opportunity to help people by saving their lives is more suited to me than any other job could be. So far I have saved several people from ages two through twenty.

I don’t enjoy school, college, etc. I’ve been known to not apply myself as well as I should, even though I do well when I do apply myself. I have this thought that the only reason colleges want you to take certain classes to be a “well-rounded person” is so you’ll pay them more money so you can get through them and go on to the classes you actually want to take. I want to take writing classes, but the ones I want are classes I’m not able to get into because I don’t meet the prerequisites.

So, in light of the possibility of a new job, I am taking a year off from school to write and work. When I go back to school, it will most likely be for EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) training, because I already enjoy my current line of work.

Other than that, I hope you enjoy my work, especially considering the effort I’ve put into most everything here. Thanks for reading!

(Copied from my StoryWrite profile at http://storywrite.com/guitarshank )