The story behind the writer and thus The Proving Zone

Although reading is one of my chief pleasures, serendipity clearly rules my life. In February 1999 four things happened in the same two week period that inspired me to take up novel writing.  I’d never thought to be a writer, even finding it quite impossible as a teenager to keep a diary. What to write on a post card or one of those pesky tiny cards that go in flower arrangements still takes me an sweat blood. Except novels—these situations all still apply.

The first event of serendipitous change:

As my husband entered the room, I tossed a book down. I was just finishing up a Jayne Ann Krentz novel about a novelist. One of the lines from the book explained that writers have so many stories of their own that they don’t want to write other people’s story ideas.

He said, "Bad book?"

"No, just disappointed. I’ve had an idea for a book that I wanted to read since I was 15. I've kept myself from thinking about so that if I ever met a writer I’d tell them the story, they would write it, and then I would read it and know how it ended. Now I’ve found out that they wouldn’t want it!"

The second event of serendipitous change:

He gave me that you’re a dumb shit look and asked, "How old are you?"

"44"

"Then if you’d written a page a week, you’d know how it ended by now, wouldn’t you?"

I had to agree.

The third event of serendipitous change:

I like watching the television sitcom Dharma and Greg. An episode where Dharma inherits a violin came on. Greg and his family insisted she needed lessons. Her parents’ comment of "No! If you take lessons, you play someone else’s music." struck a chord of intelligent reality in me. There went the stumbling block that I had to wait for lessons before I began. (Are you career writers horrified yet?) Besides, I live over 90 miles from the nearest place to take any kind of writing lessons.

The fourth event of serendipitous change:

A fortune cookie. I was having lunch with my sister at our favorite oriental restaurant and my fortune that day was—the world is always ready for new talent.

And therefore—I write.

I have found that writing novels is wicked fun...

                                        and I hope you're having wicked fun too....

Nina

About Nina M. Sipes