Write… Because Therapy Is Expensive
As Elle Woods once said, “What… Like it’s hard?”
Except writing is… Very hard, extremely taxing, and wonderfully therapeutic.
It seems fitting to start these blog posts somewhere at the beginning of my writing double-life, though it’s hard to put into words what writing has meant to me over the years. So, instead, I’ll paint a picture.
A girl grows up in a small town. She has friends, an off-the-boat grandfather, a sport she loves, and a family that means the world to her. She faces adolescence head-on amid losing friends, gaining an abusive coach, and enduring the death of her same beloved grandfather. Somewhere along the line, she loses sight of who she is.
High school comes along. She plays on a different team than her ex-friends and ex-coach, rediscovers a love for the game, plays against the abusive coach, beats him, and is acknowledged for being pretty damn good at a sport she almost quit. Ultimately, she forages friendships old and new, alongside a team that has an undeniably meteoric rise, culminating in a state championship. In the blink of an eye, college is around the corner (enter the audible gasp), and miss girl is forced to realize that the inevitable heartache she feels is not about saying goodbye to the sport, it’s about saying goodbye to her childhood.
Plot twist… the sport was a metaphor the whole time. Cue the waterworks lol.
Essentially, that was the plot of my first novel, barring a few early-onset midlife crises, teenage crashouts, and insufferable episodes of chronic girl drama.
Disclaimer: that novel is far from the series I am getting published, because compared to The Shore Summer Series, that first novel is something resembling a heaping plate of hot garbage. But, it was an integral step in achieving the writing career that I am crafting today, just like today is integral in the writing career I hope to have ten years from now.
Some elements of that first novel were founded in my life, while others were completely fictitious. And that concept—the way that real feelings can combine with fictional plots and characters to create such an authentic reading experience, is why I fell in love with contemporary fiction.
My writing has changed a lot over the years—I know many more words than I used to and misspell “restaurant” less (I still do, but less)—but at the heart of everything I write are imperfect stories that humanize elements of relatable life experience. I strive to write plots that are moving because they are innately human, and settings that are unforgettable because they live and breathe all on their own.
Just like being human, writing is all in the details, and capturing the essence of some of the greatest and hardest times of my life through the cursor of a Word doc has been one of the great joys of my twenty-three years (and counting.)
Summer Rayne is coming to Olive Press Publishing in 2027, and I’m psyched to share this joy of my life with readers through the lens of Rayne and an undoubtedly life-changing summer.
-Julia ♥
