My earliest memory of writing fiction comes from Mrs. Carroll’s Language Arts class in sixth grade at Gateway Middle School in Maumee, Ohio. I don’t remember the specifics of the assignment; I think we were given the freedom to write our own unprompted short story. What is vivid and clear to me: I was obsessed with that story–consumed by it. I’d write between classes, during lunch, as soon as I got home. When I couldn’t actively write, I thought about writing. Many of my classmates wrote a page or two for the assignment. I came in the next day with a hand-written, twelve-page, zombie action/adventure flick called Don’t Drink the Water. It was complete and utter garbage, of course… but I had already planned a sequel! The quality of the story is irrelevant; I had discovered a passion for writing.

In seventh grade, I started working on a fantasy novel (a trilogy, actually), as most eleven-year-old boys are wont to do, surely. The concept was straight out of an early-2000’s pre-teen’s fever-dream: “What if I combined Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and The Matrix?”. As you might guess, it wasn’t all that great. But dang it, I never gave up on that thing. By the end of seventh grade, I had finished a hand-written, fifty-page draft of the first book in the series. In eighth grade, I edited/expanded it, typed it (on my mom’s Windows 95 desktop, which I fought with my sister to use… and I totally saved it to a floppy disk!), and submitted an excerpt to a youth writing competition. It won the “Scholastic Gold Key” award, which I think was mostly out of pity that a middle-school kid would spend so much time writing, rather than the actual quality of the prose. I continued progressing for several years, finally reaching the finish line during my junior year of high school. The Quest for the Key series was a 100,000+ word epic, complete with book covers and world maps. Again, none of these words will ever see the light of day. But I finished that thing, and that matters. I proved to myself that I have the horse-power, the bandwidth, and the discipline to write big things. (I tell myself this as I’m currently struggling to complete big writing projects.)

After graduating from Maumee High School in 2007, I  attended The Ohio State University to study Mechanical Engineering, and writing faded to the background for quite a while. Then, in 2010, I saw Christopher Nolan’s Inception and manic obsession struck me again. It’s the only movie I’ve ever paid to see in a movie theater, then paid to go back and see it again the next day. I went for a run shortly after, and a story began to take shape in my head. I remember being inspired by the show Lost, and I loved how the writers used mystery and unanswered questions to always keep viewers wanting more. Add in some anti-authority themes from my favorite band, Muse, and the seeds for my scifi/thriller Awakening had been planted. For the next ten years, I worked on Awakening off-and-on, with short bursts of all-nighters spent drafting, followed by months of inactivity. To date, I’d guess I’ve written nearly 200,000 words for that story, though a majority of them have been cut.

Some other themes from my own life at the time shaped the manuscript, and I discovered writing as a way of understanding my own emotions. I was extremely close with a small group of friends all throughout my childhood. As life began to take us in different directions–literally scattering us all in separate states–that was hard for me. One of the ways I processed that transition was through my characters. At the same time, I was forming my own beliefs as I ventured into adulthood. Clint and Gabe’s conflicting views on faith certainly reflected some of my own internal battles. A lot of angsty venting and rambling stream-of-consciousness has been edited out over time, but there’s no doubt these themes left a mark on the soul of the book.  In some ways, the story has coming-of-age qualities… but that age is early-twenties, rather than late-teens.

I don’t need to tell you what happened in 2020, you already know; it happened to all of us. Being quarantined at home allowed me to rediscover my passion for writing. I doubled down on Awakening and made more progress than I had in years. As I neared the end of the manuscript, I started researching more about the publishing process. I drew two conclusions: 

1) I needed to build a reputation, a platform, and a network. 

2) I should strive to improve more as a writer before trying to query a full-length novel. 

So, although my Awakening manuscript was nearing completion, I decided to shelve it for a while. I didn’t want to rush it. (Admittedly, having our first child in the Fall of 2020 probably didn’t help with writing momentum.) I have not worked on Awakening since, but I plan to revisit it when I’m ready. It will be interesting to view the piece with older, more experienced, eyes.

In pursuit of the two goals mentioned above, I pivoted and started focusing my writing time & energy in other places. My teaching colleague, Jon Woolley, and I started a podcast called Writing In Progress. Our early episodes were a little rough, but we have gotten better in the three years and forty episodes since. We’ve learned a lot about writing, thanks in-no-small-part to the nine guests we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing. We are nearing five thousand unique downloads in our history, with our top episode having been downloaded by over three hundred people. We’re proud of our community of WIPpersnappers, and I think this pursuit has been a great step toward success for my first goal.

Around the same time, I saw an advertisement for NYC Midnight. I joined the short story competition and was assigned the genre “spy” with a prompted character “adviser” and subject “vulnerability”. I wrote a story called Pawn and finished first place in my group. So, I decided to enter their 100-word microfiction competition. I was assigned science fiction as my genre with a prompted action “blush” and word “churn”. I wrote a story called Targeted Marketing and won first place in my group. Winning my group in the first two rounds of NYC Midnight I ever participated in definitely caused unrealistic expectations I’ve had to work through. (In the thirty-one rounds of NYC Midnight I’ve participated in since, I’ve won once.)

I had caught the bug. In the winter of 2022, through the NYC Midnight forums, A user named Max Bjork was growing a small competition called Writing Battle. I decided to try it and fell in love with its format. I’ve now participated in ten Battles and have no plans of stopping soon. Through Writing Battle, I met Ryan Fleming, who encouraged me to try Writer’s Playground, a longer competition which I have now entered three times. The snowball was rolling.

I made another writing friend through the forums, Maggie Schreier, who invited me to a group called Write Around the Block. I’m still not quite sure where on the “We don’t talk about Fight Club” spectrum we fall, but I’ll just say I was incredibly lucky to be welcomed into this amazing group of authors. I’m not sure there’s been any one thing that has been more important in advancing the two goals I’m striving to achieve in this stage of my writing journey.

But I still hadn’t sold or published a word, so I definitely felt (/still feel) like an imposter. Through WAB, I was introduced to TL;DR press’ 1,000 word herd flash fiction contest. I was assigned the prompts of “prophecy” and “home carer.” I had a busy schedule the weekend it was due, so I wrote my entire draft on the bus to and from a track meet. Somehow, I managed to place third and was published in their Curios anthology. It was my first time being compensated for my writing and first time being featured in a collection. A small step, but an encouraging step.

I’ve been published two other times since then. In May of 2024, my story “Two Truths, at Once” was named an honorable mention in Writer’s Playground’s eighth challenge, and is now available to read on their website. I was also chosen first place for MockingOwl Roost’s fairy tale and mythology contest. The story (and an interview with me) will be available in their September winner’s issue. I submitted Fallen after a call was posted on WAB. Fallen was originally a Writing Battle piece. The prompted genre was “conspiracy”, the subject “supernatural forces”, and the word “numinous”–which I totally had to google. I wrote a retelling of the fall of Lucifer. It wasn’t received particularly well by my peer judges, winning only five of its ten duels and failing to advance to the final showdown in Writing Battle. So, it felt gratifying to see the story get some redemption in a later submission.

And that brings us to now. I have amassed a fairly large collection of stories–roughly fifty competition pieces and another few dozen of my own unprompted stories. I am going to try to shift my focus away from accumulating work through contests and instead on submitting those pieces or compiling them into my own collection. I have an anthology in mind that focuses on identity and connection. It has an emotional through-line that I’m excited to explore. I’m making a personal goal to really concentrate on this collection in November and January, so perhaps I’ll have something ready to share within the year.