It’s really weird to be back in a town where I lived (or lived in the next door town) ten years ago.  The town itself has changed and morphed with the addition of SVU, but I can feel that some of the changes are due to a shift in my own perspective.

And not just that I no longer blend in with the fresh-faced college students.

Ten+ years ago, living here, I attempted my first novel and worked on a second.  I took the first class intended to help me publish.  I checked out every book in the local library on writing and how to break in, I submitted my first story for publication, and recieved my first rejection.

That all seems a very long time ago as I sit in classes taught by OSC and work from a book that I’ve been familiar with for most of the past ten years.  Over those ten years I’ve written reams of words and edited more, added several dozen classes to the insights of that first one, and published a half-dozen short stories.  My writing has come a good way since its beginning in this lovely valley, but I confess that all that distance and all the perspective has only intensified my over-arching goal:

I want to publish my books.

Now.

So, I guess you know what my perspective is here at bootcamp.  Everything I learn, every exercise, I snatch up and eagerly slip into the cracks in my knowledge and weak spots in my craft.  Because ten years strikes me as long enough for an internship.