Thanks, Ginger, for allowing me to be here on your blog today. Since this month your focus goes in-depth on Muse authors, I thought I’d tell more about how I came to be a writer.
The story of how I ended up writing fiction is at least circuitous, if not interesting. My path evolved from my initial desire, entering college to be liberal arts major. I would have been perfectly content as a dual major, fine art/English. But, my parents seemed to want me to be employable, so they steered me toward science. I didn’t complain, since I did enjoy biology and chemistry. I’m the sort who loves learning. Many topics fascinate me.
After four years, I ended up with a Bachelor of Arts in biology with a minor in English. There are no longer programs for B.A. in Biology, only B.S. In order to gain my unusual degree, I took extra summer terms to make time for my diversions of art, American literature, contemporary cinema, art history, philosophy, and so on. My fellow organic chemistry students thought I had a few screws loose, relishing writing essays for my literature classes. To me those were the perfect balance for physics and biochemistry.
From there, I entered dental school at The Ohio State University, studying to be a dentist. For four years I did well, too well to understand why I didn’t like it. So, during my senior year, after passing my national dental boards, I decided this was not my destiny. I had learned a lot, but it was wrong, unbalanced for my creative needs. I sacrificed completing that goal in order to be “hirable” for a public school teaching position. An inexperienced teacher with an advanced degree isn’t too marketable. After a year gaining teacher certification, I went on to teach high school biology, anatomy, and ecology for seventeen years. Aside from early morning hours and tedious faculty meetings, those years were good ones. I enjoyed meeting challenges presented by different students. So many faces and personalities still travel with me as cherished memories.
During those career years, creativity was put aside for family goals. I eventually reached out to my love of writing, but not fiction. Instead, I chose to write non-fiction reviews for music forums and eventually for a couple major record labels. In that process, I frequented music websites. One had a fan fiction thread which caught my eye. As a lark, I joined in and the story flourished with a faithful following for at least a year. One of those readers turned out to work for a major publishing house. He urged me to consider writing fiction professionally. Of course, I thought he was crazy. After a few more months of his encouragement, I started crafting stories for publication, joining writing groups, and learning about fiction writing skills. I was totally swept away and never looked back.
Some days I feel I owe a lot to that devoted reader’s advice, directing me along this path, and other days it seems I’ve only drifted full circle, back to the direction I initially wanted to follow. Either way, I’m grateful life presented me with this road.
You may learn more about me and my writing at http://www.marshaamoore.com
