I love to read.

As a kid, I used to bike to the library every other day.  I'd check out my maximum of 3 books at a time, bike home, and dig right in.

Mystery novels.  Horror stories.  Historical biographies.  Speculative and experimental fiction.  I couldn't get enough.

Powell's, the local bookstore, held occasional book signings with popular autographs.  I went to one a month, collecting mountains of autographed tomes and bolstering my love for the written word.

One day, in high school, I finally decided I wanted to be a writer.  I mentioned it to my parents, my friends, my teachers.  I started adding "publish a novel" to my bucket and new years' resolutions lists.

Writing is Hard

I have no less than 5 unfinished novels in my Dropbox.  They're all fun stories, and if you ever want to hear what they're about I'll tell you.

But when it comes to storytelling, I can get a bit distracted.  I can type quickly, but not nearly as fast as I think.  As a result, I've usually burned through a particular story at least 10 times before I finish typing the first half - and my brain has moved on to something newer and more exciting.

In college, I met an amazing writer in my freshman dorm.  She was incredibly talented and wrote hundreds of pages of fan fiction in the universe of a series we both enjoyed.  Like me, she wanted to be a writer - unlike me, she was actually writing.

When she suggested I try NaNoWriMo one year to get started, I signed right up - and wrote 200 words total during the month of November.

A few years later, I started a publishing company to make good on a promise I'd made to publish her first book.  I've now published four books by three separate authors.

I have yet to finish one of my own.

Democratizing Publishing

I got involved in WordPress originally because of its promise to "democratize publishing."  Honestly, I'm still not quite sure what the rest of the community means by that - or if we're living up to that ideal - but it still appeals to me.

I work on software that lets anyone publish their work online, quickly, without needing to learn how to hack code, set up a server, or seek out a medium through which to publish.  I use the software daily so I can understand the pains people go through using it.

This also means I'm producing a lot of written content.

Once upon a time I wanted to be a writer.  I wanted to be a writer because I loved books and, eventually, began to run out of the kind of things I wanted to read.

I wanted to become a writer so I could produce content for people like me.  So I could write things I would enjoy.  So I could, one day, meet someone who'd read and enjoyed my work and be able to have a conversation about how they felt about it.

I became a writer so I could join the conversation.  How about you?