If anything, this post is even more aggressively anticommercial than my usual ones, judging by how many pictures of kittens it doesn't have. (An IWSG Post)

This is an IWSG post.  For more about the Insecure Writers Support Group, click this link.

I have been writing now, 'officially', as it were, for... 


9 YEARS.

I only just realized how long it's been since I started writing again, and it's been 9 years, which surprised me because it honestly doesn't seem that long.

I began writing in grade school, as probably all writers did. Or did they? I think every writer I've ever read about began with stories they wrote early on in their life not because they were assigned to do that, but just because they liked to tell stories.

My first story ever was one called "Starhounds," and it was a Star Wars ripoff, in the sense that if you took the "Star Wars" script and replaced "Rebel Alliance" everywhere it appears with "Starhounds," you would have my story.  I'm pretty sure my villain was still called "Darth Vader."

The public reception to "Starhounds" was not encouraging, as shown by this ACTUAL RE-ENACTMENT: