Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Wordy Wednesday: The Great Catherine Peace

For this month, 3 of my favorite authors and I are going to talk about who inspired us to write.

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Catherine Peace is one of my best friends, and she has her first book out! You can read my post about it here: Monday Mentionables: This Time Next Year

And now, you can buy it at any of these places:
 
Decadent Publishing
 
Onto the blog:
 
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I’ve been writing for a long time. Over half my life, actually. *I’m 28 and have been writing since I was 8, so there you go.* And I have to say that in all those twenty years, no one has quite touched my life like my high school English teacher.

I know that this post is supposed to be about the people who inspired you to write, but #1, I don’t think the state of Kentucky deserves that much credit (thanks 4th grade portfolio), and #2, Ms. Carroll is probably the reason I’m as good a writer as I am today, which means she’s almost directly responsible for me getting published.

Never in my life had I had a teacher as challenging as she was. Granted, it was my mistake to take her for AP English, after the hell that was freshman English with her, but man, those AP credits look fantastic on transcripts. Our small class of maybe 10 was at her mercy for the semester.

In addition to the mass amounts of reading we had to do, we also got to do tons of essay writing. Any time she assigned one, she’d give us a period of time (usually two days at the most) to come up with our thesis. And every time I presented my thesis to her, she’d suck on her front teeth (and make that tch sound), look at me with a somewhat bored expression on her face, and say, “You can do better than this.”

Keep in mind, I’d spent HOURS wracking my brain to come up with said newly-rejected thesis idea. HOURS. Given the outrageous amount of homework I already had, devoting hours to pounding my brain for one freaking thesis idea was the equivalent of a week of pure thought. And for it to be rejected? To be told I could do better after I’d already done the best I could? There were times I returned to my seat in tears, wondering how on earth I could possibly do better than that.

And then I would.

Again and again, Ms. Carroll and I would perform this cruel dance. I’d put all my thought and effort into a thesis only for it to be rejected. But then one day something magical happened—I started thinking like Ms. Carroll, telling myself I can do better before she had the chance. And the first time I handed over my thesis, with my tail tucked between my legs, and she grinned and nodded and sent me back to my seat? I may as well have won a gold medal.

In all honesty, she gave me the single greatest gift I could ever have gotten—the ability to go deeper, to pull from the depths of my brain, heart, and soul, and put that on paper. She helped me learn to kill my darlings. And in-so-doing, she helped me achieve my dreams.

 
Catherine Peace has been telling stories for as long as she could remember. She often blames two things for her forays into speculative fiction—Syfy (when it was SciFi) channel Sundays with her dad and The Island of Dr. Moreau by HG Wells. She graduated in 2008 from Northern Kentucky University with a degree in English and is still chasing the dream of being super rich and famous, mostly so she can sit around in her PJs all day and write stories. When not being a slave to the people in her head, she’s a slave to two adorable dogs. Facebook
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Blog: Going from Nobody to Somebody
Blog: The Pen Punks
Reviewer for Indie Books R Us

3 comments:

  1. Thank you for hosting me, babe! MWAH!

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  2. Writing is a process and we all get better as we go - but only if we keep writing! I make that sucking sound at my own work :)

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  3. I love these kinds of stories. The lessons we pick up from some wonderful people. Without them we'd be lost, and because of them we're making things happen. Great Post!

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