After five years of not really writing, I kind of figured I’d come back to writing much later. It became one of those someday plans, that I half expected not to come true.

By this time I’d gone from a college student to a work-at-home mom of one, aged eighteen months. And despite taking care of my son and working in Internet marketing, I was pretty darn bored a lot of the time.

Until I had a dream.

The dream itself was pretty bizarre. I don’t remember a whole lot about it, but it seemed to be inspired by the ’70s version of The Great Gatsby. Only with horror, because the only actual event in the dream was blood dripping from the ceiling of an ornate, grandiose house.

As cool as that story element would be, it had nothing to do with the story I started the next day. It was more the characters and the Roaring Twenties setting that inspired me to start what would become my first completed novel* the next day.

I figured I spent enough time on the computer, and I needed to be there for my son, and maybe the charm of the setting also appealed to me—because I decided to write it longhand. After four feverish weeks of writing, I finished a short novel. As I typed it up, I restructured one of the chapters pretty majorly and thought I was pretty dang awesome 😉 . That was “editing” in those days.

I was proud of it at the time, but I think I showed it to two people, my sister-in-law and my best friend (one of my high school writing friends). Their encouragement—and another dream featuring one of them—was enough to push me on to my next project.

And a writer was born!

You know, sort of.

Where does your inspiration come from? What prompted your first novel? Come share!

*So technically, this novel is far short of the word count of a typical novel, but I count it anyway.

Photo credits: dreaming person & cat—MooBob42; dream bracelet—Jake Belluchi