Guest Author: Amy Ratcliffe, Geek With Curves

For the third month in a row, I'm happy to present a guest post by a local writer. Today, meet Amy Ratcliffe.

I love her story. She wanted to be a writer. She thought about it. Then she decided to make it happen and bam! 

I think you'll like Amy as much as I do.

My name is Amy Ratcliffe. I'm a geek (that will be relevant in a minute). For most of my life I said I wanted to be a writer. However, I didn't do much to make that dream happen. I wrote as often as I felt like it in my writing notebook, and if you only write when you feel like it, the notebook doesn't fill up very fast. I participated in National Novel Writing Month a couple of times and actually defeated it once. I started blogging and realized it was fun to get feedback on the words I was putting out there. But I didn't know how to translate any of this to making my dream happen.

Then I was watching Star Wars for the nth time in January of last year, and I thought to myself: why not create a blog just for discussing your favorite geeky things?  So I started Geek With Curves. I signed up for Twitter around the same time. This started a new chapter (pun entirely intended) for me. I made myself sit down and write every day whether I felt like it or not. I started making connections. I also found a huge geek community on Twitter. People that didn't judge me for reading comic books or dressing up like Han Solo.

Through these people, I found writing work. Slowly but surely I am building a list of sites that are happy to accept articles about the politics in Game of Thrones or the female role models in The Clone Wars. I contribute to websites such as Tor.com, ScienceFiction.com, and the L.A. Times Hero Complex. I am doing what I love. A talented artist I know always tells people, "Don't tell me how bad you want it, show me." This is the phrase I keep in mind when I've had a long day at work and don't feel like sitting in front of a blank screen. I don't sleep as much I'd like, I definitely don't watch as much television as I want to, but I hope the sacrifices will be worth it when I'm doing what I love to do full time. And I believe I'll get there. Eventually.