I wanted to be a writer from the time I was little. When I wasn't reading, I was writing, and when I wasn't reading or writing, I was making stuff up and telling it to whoever was listening (as an adult, we call it "having a great imagination," but when I was a kid, they called it "lying through her teeth"). My efforts were normally greeted with pats on the head and "aren't you cute" sort of comments, but I learned early on that my very best efforts garnered the same amount of praise as my worst, which led me to believe they were less than sincere.

In college, I wrote a short story about the death of my mother, and my family took the whole thing badly. Although I gave the family in the story the same number and gender of members mine had at the time, I made the people in the story up, because at the time my own family was just too painful for me to want to think about in any kind of detail. Still, my family read about a similar family in grief behaving badly and took it very personally.

My facility with language has never been particularly praised or even discussed. It has always felt that these skills that I've spent a lifetime developing and honing are the very least of what's been expected of me, and the fact that I haven't also gone into medicine or engineering or law is a constant disappointment to my family. My own grandmother could never understand why I would always rather stay inside and read than go play outside. This partially explains why it took me so long to take my own writing seriously.

On Friday, I took the Badb to the NaNoWriMo TGIO party. She'd been looking forward to it ever since November 30th, when, after 30 days of writing, she reached her NaNoWriMo Young Writer's Program challenge of 3,000 words. As with most people, she was off to an inspired start, got really sick during the month and missed several days, got stuck in the middle of her story, and then came from behind on the very last day and crossed the finish line.

There at the party, the little kid was surrounded by other writers and writing supporters answering questions about her novel, listening to the works of other novelists, and basking in the adulation of the entire crowd. At the point in Chris Baty's speech where he was talking about the Young Writer's Program, she made her way to the front of the crowd and he called her out as an example of the YWP participants, and she received the applause of a sizeable crowd. She took all this in as no more than her due.

At this point, there's a clear connection in her mind between the hard work of writing and the exciting payoff of love and support from a ready-made community. I recognize that my parents' failure to encourage me was primarily due to the fact that they had no idea how to do so in any way that I would have found meaningful. It makes me wonder, though, how my life would have been different if these opportunities had existed when I was younger.

I guess it doesn't matter. I'm happy now. My life is good, and a part of that goodness is the knowledge that if writing is something that the little kid chooses to pursue with any seriousness, she's got a good start, and I helped to give it to her.