How do

We all have questions about how to do things. If we didn't, frankly, no one would ever do anything, because no one would ever be curious enough to figure out how to do it in the first place. Think about all the cool things you have ever done in your life, or ever wanted to do, and realize that somewhere, someone at some point had to figure out how to do that in the first place. Most of us probably have asked ourselves while doing something, "Who came up with this in the first place?" And the things that we may not realize is that that applies to absolutely everything that has ever been. Hell, we wouldn't even be here if way back at the beginning of history, two people didn't figure out how to make a baby.

One thing I've never asked myself though, and you'd think I would, is how to write a book. I've often wondered how to publish one, how to advertise one, how to get people to buy one, how to format it and make a cover for it, but never how to write it. It's never been something that I've been curious about, because I just kind of started doing it. I never thought about it. I just started telling stories when I was a little kid, coming up with new and weird ways things could play out, and as I grew up I wanted to remember them, so I started writing them down. And eventually I found that I enjoyed doing it, so I wrote more and more, and my writing began to become more refined and focused, and then... Well, then I started a blog.

Despite knowing the answer already, I once asked an author how he came up with the ideas for his books. He told me he didn't. There was no process of coming up with an idea for a story he wanted to tell. It just came to him, and as it did, he wrote it down. And the more he wrote it down, the more it evolved and expanded, and so he kept writing, until eventually he had a long and detailed book sitting in front of him.

When I was a kid, I would play pretend all the time. I would lead my friends around the playground, telling them about what abilities we had, and what we were fighting, and where we were. It was like we were really there, and we could see the monsters, feel our own bodies being surrounded in the elements as we called upon our magic to fight them. I wish I could explain what about it was so magical that it came upon us so powerfully. But it did, and I remember it so specifically, and it's something that I try to tap into when I write. We didn't have to think about it back then.

It's kinda weird to think about how there are somethings that you don't have to think about. They just come to you. We all have them, though we might not always realize it. No one had to explain to me how to take words and sentences and put them together to make a coherent story. No one had to explain to me how to create characters and worlds. I don't know how I got these abilities. I just know that I want to keep working at them and refining them, until I can tell stories I can be proud of and that hopefully someone else will want to read.