{"id":318,"date":"2010-06-07T08:39:57","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T15:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writeolive.com\/?p=126"},"modified":"2010-06-07T08:39:57","modified_gmt":"2010-06-07T15:39:57","slug":"how-i-became-a-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oliveobrien.com\/?p=318","title":{"rendered":"How I Became a Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, I am thrilled to welcome Laura Jane Cassidy, a 23-year-old writer from Co. Kildare, Ireland.\u00a0\u00a0Laura writes supernatural crime for teens and her debut novel, Angel Kiss, will be published by Puffin in 2011.\u00a0 She blogs about writing, reading and lots of other things on her blog First Three Chapters.<\/a><\/em>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cA man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bob Dylan<\/a><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t always know I wanted to be a writer, but I did always know I wanted to do something I was passionate about. I longed for a profession that I\u2019d never want to retire from, a job that I\u2019d gladly do even if I wasn\u2019t getting paid for it. I think life is far too short to spend too much of it doing anything other than the things you love with the people you love. And I really do think that if you follow your passion, things will fall into place.<\/p>\n

Three and a half years ago I got an idea for a book.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t get this idea out of my head, so I started to write. I hadn\u2019t written any fiction since primary school, I hadn\u2019t written anything creative in my teens except for a few terribly embarrassing songs, but this idea seemed like exactly the kind of thing I\u2019d love to read.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So I decided to give writing a go. I was studying Drama in college, and although I loved acting, I never felt like I truly fitted in the theatrical world. Then I went to my first creative writing workshop, and for the first time in my life I felt like I had found my tribe. Looking around the room at my fellow bespectacled writers, each with a flashy notebook in front of them, it was as if I was looking at reflections of myself. One of the authors talking at the workshop was Sarah Webb, and she was so incredibly inspiring. I had a total \u2018I so want to be her\u2019 moment.\u00a0 I went home from the workshop and literally wrote for the whole summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Writing is an odd sort of profession. It\u2019s exhausting to the point where you want to bang your head against your bookcase, but at the same time it\u2019s completely addictive, something that\u2019s so much fun you can stay up until four in the morning doing, even if you don\u2019t have a deadline. Sometimes I\u2019ll go to bed at night so excited by how a chapter is progressing that I\u2019ll find it difficult to sleep. I always wanted a job that was fun, but I never thought I\u2019d get that lucky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, I am thrilled to welcome Laura Jane Cassidy, a 23-year-old writer from Co. Kildare, Ireland.\u00a0\u00a0Laura writes supernatural crime for teens and her debut novel, Angel Kiss, will be published by Puffin in 2011.\u00a0 She blogs about writing, reading and lots of other things on her blog First Three Chapters.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cA man is a success […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oliveobrien.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oliveobrien.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oliveobrien.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oliveobrien.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oliveobrien.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oliveobrien.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oliveobrien.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oliveobrien.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oliveobrien.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}