My writing journey started on a Summer's night about a year ago when the sun was still shining at 9 pm in the evening. My parents had come from South Africa to visit their bizarre children who'd decided that the great white North of Canada was preferable to the rolling green and browns of Africa. With no formal training or preparedness, I pulled out my trusting laptop and began to type. I had no clue about story structure, plot, characters, POV (I mean what's that really?). I had no idea about hooks, entrance scenes, exit scenes. I mean when you write you just sit down with an idea for a story and put it down on paper. Simple right? No epically not. Crafting a story takes time, dedication, and dare I say it, EDITING!!! (Ah, it's like an evil monster with a fairy wand.) I guess you could say I have kind of a love-hate relationship with editing. I love the way editing crafts my story into something that will endure my characters and their made-up world to my readers. How it brings my characters more richly to life or how it deepens their relationships. But, it's the long, heavy slog of reading word to word, again and again, making sure each word is perfect in its sentence, each grammar rule is adhered to until at last all characters arcs come to an end. The story is sewn up in a neat bow and at last its ready to meet the world. Is it easy? No. Is it worth it? A million times yes!