My Writing Journey

My first memory of writing a story (that wasn’t a school assignment) is sitting down at the boxy desktop computer kept in our basement and drafting Katlimon, a sci-fi story that my eight-year-old brain cooked up.

I also remember running upstairs to regale my mom with the exploits of my characters as she cooked dinner. I wonder now if it sounded like gibberish to her.

Probably.

Since then, I have written many stories and started and abandoned even more. But I’ve always written. That and reading are two of the only “hobbies” that have stuck with me my entire life. Soccer, dance, guitar, piano, drawing, all come and go at intervals. But needing to drown myself in worlds outside my own — whether created by me or an author or a filmmaker — has remained. I anticipate it always will.

Eight-year-old Joy would be thrilled to know she’s a full-time writer. But twenty-something Joy is still working towards the goal that Katlimon seeded — becoming a published author.

I used to think that writing alone would be enough to accomplish my goal. All that mattered was words finding their way from my brain to the page. What I didn’t know until quite recently was how much I didn’t know — about story craft, getting an agent, publishing, etc.

In 2020, I realized that I had to “get serious”. I needed to first learn and then take the steps that separate writer from author.

That’s where I am now — the
in-between.