Bernadette Benda

The end of the decade it nigh. To give you how much has changed over the past ten years, before the last change of a decade I remember looking at a list of the best movies in the past decade (which included the Lord of the Rings) in a newspaper. A NEWSPAPER.

But at the moment I’d rather just focus on writing than all the other events of the decade, which have been many, and I have neither the time nor the energy to sum everything up.

Looking back over the last ten years of me writing is both amazing and super cringe worthy. (I mean ten  years ago I was like a child so you know…)

But a lot of cool stuff did happen, like all these things I wrote

• They called Her Silver (to be queried soon)
• Raptor (DISASTER)
• Oh, Wonder Why the Sun Fell (DISASTER)
• Oh, Wonder Why the Sun Fell (another draft of it. SO much better)
• Lily’s Real Name is Leviathan 
• Green Crows and White Creatures
• Where Dragons Sleep
• Red Dream
• When the Crows Murdered the Moor (short story)
• The Faerie Prince (short story)
• the Michigan Triangle (half finished Nanowrimo)

Yeah, I wrote all that (looks at my literary offspring proudly). The majority of that was in the last like two years but whatever. In the early years of this decade (2010-2013) I was a wee writer, just budding.

I wrote the very first version of Oh, Wonder Why the Sun Fell (it was….bad). There was Tree Speakers (those who have known me for a long time gasp). There was that weird Snow White retelling (one of the dwarves’ name was Thor. I kid you not). There was just so much.

That time when my sister was in college and we did a writing prompt challenge together and actually mailed our stuff to each other in fat envelopes.

THE MOUNTAINS OF POETRY I WROTE.

Most importantly it’s the decade I found my voice as a writer. I remember the day, a spring night in 2013. I started writing Green Crows and White Creatures, and something just clicked that hadn’t before. I wrote faster than I ever had, my characters and descriptions were stronger and clearer. And I never looked back.

Here’s to another ten years. *raises glass*

What writing are you proud of most over the decade?