This being my first post here on SheWrites, I thought I should first introduce myself to the crowd.
Hi. My name is Jenna. I'm a wife of 17 years, a mom of two beautiful daughters, and an introverted engineer. I'm addicted to college football (GO BUCKEYES!), alternative music, and true crime shows like Dateline, 48 hours, and Forsenic Files (which my husband swears is because I'm plotting his murder). Oh, and I'm an upmarket adult fiction author, and my debut novel, THE RULES OF HALF, released on June 6th.
There. Now that that's out of the way....
So, why do I write? It’s a simple enough question, but one that I found hard to answer simply because it could mean many things. I write because I love the written word. I love music lyrics and beautifully written essays. I love books that make me question the world around me and transform me into a better person. And I love writing words, piecing together the perfect series to express what I’m feeling in the perfect way, until the giant puzzle is complete. That’s why I write.
But I can do that at home in my journal, which is why I being a writer is another tale.
While I’ve been writing short stories since grade school, it was during a bout with depression that I began my first novel. I wrote it for therapy, trying to escape to a place where an imperfect world could be made perfect and people could be built without flaws. Ironically, it was through that process that I learned to embrace my imperfect life and love my flawed self, because I realized that perfection makes for a fairly boring life, and book for that matter. When I sat down to write THE RULES OF HALF, I began with this in mind, and it amazed me how much easier the words of a flawed character flowed off my fingertips. It was like breathing – natural and pure.
I write because I love beautiful words. I’m a writer because I know that, for whatever reason, this is what I was meant to do.
-Jenna Patrick
I can relate to this for sure!