Andrea D. Smith's Blog: Things and Stuff

It seems like a lot of the authors I really love and admire know each other. More than that, they seem like they're all friends! I see them talking on Twitter, or mentioning each other in interviews, and I get this mental image of Sarah Rees Brennan, Mira Grant, Mark Oshiro, and Kelley Armstrong all hanging out together, drinking fine wines and talking about how amazing they are. And then one of them says, "I think I'll write a really fantastic book series that will ruin Andrea's life!" and then they all talk about what a wonderful idea this is, and the next day Feed and Unspoken are hanging out in the bookstore, calling out to me exactly like the guy in the Carly Rae Jepsen video doesn't.

It is my dream to one day be part of this awesome club. It's as though they're the Pink Ladies and I'm Olivia Newton John, except I spend a lot of time on Tumblr and can't sing to save my life. One day I will write a book that, if I'm really, really lucky, might get close to being half as awesome as anything written by one of these people. I'm not being self-deprecating, and this isn't me fishing for compliments. It is a quantifiable fact that my writing is not this good yet.

I write fiction every day of my life. Some of it even gets published. But it's nowhere near what I want it to be. I'm really going to have to work to get there. I know that, and I'm willing to put in the effort. It's just hard for me to know what steps I need to take to do that.

Someday, I will be the kind of writer that Mark Oshiro reads on camera and flails about. That is my promise to myself. It is my goal in life. If I can accomplish that, I can die happy.

It shouldn't be too hard. Right?