Back again with 30 gifts I want for my 30th birthday. Today I'm at Gift #29.

#29: To write more.

My first memory of writing is the little pink diary I kept next to my bed, which I started at age 6. It was mostly full of declarations of love for Zack Morris, with his photos cut from magazines that I glued in the pages and drew red hearts around (come on 25-35 year old ladies, tell me I'm not the only one who did this!).

It's been a long time since Zack Morris. I don't keep a journal anymore, though I did until just a few years ago. It was probably slightly more sophisticated than the one full of little girl crushes. But now my desire to write has shifted... Instead of writing about how I feel in any given moment, I have a hundred characters bouncing around in my head, all of them needing to get out. I know some of the characters but I can't seem to figure out what their stories are. Maybe that's what the task of writing is for? Get the characters out on paper and their stories will flow from there?

So my gift to myself is that I am going to start writing. My friend (and writer/librarian extraordinaire) Eileen mentioned a writers group that meets once a month and I think I may join them, to see how other people get the stories inside their heads out on paper. I already know the first story I want to write. It is about a little girl named Lucia who lives in the Amazon jungle and shares her life with the animals and people in her village. It may or may not be a foreshadowing of our life to come.

Are you a writer? Have you had success in getting your ideas down on paper? If so, I'd love to know what helps you write successfully!