You could say that it all started when I was young. You could say that it was a stroke of inspiration that struck my spirit to the point of a newly-found passion. You could say a lot of things, but the moral of the stories are all one and the same: writing found me.
    The countless words written in a little girl's sloppy print on pages of wire-bound notebook never ceased to place a goofy smile on my face. I always tried to find new ideas that would stand out from the norm, and a child's imagination can reach no bounds.
    "What I would buy out of a catalog would be a big piece of property."
    That is out of a slim school notebook from my elementary years. Apparently, it would have a lake and beautiful waterfall that I would swim in. On the "big piece of property," I would build a cabin "with nobody to help." That bit gave me a laugh. It's safe to say that I was a fiercely independent girl. Oh, and I was already thinking about bills! Goodness gracious. "I will not use electricity, because I don't want to pay for it." Yeah... that was my complete explanation. I wanted a lot of land and to live without bills.
    I think it was around third grade when the idea of fantasy caught me in its infinite possibilities though. It was a foreign territory that I was eager to explore and make my own. I wrote of a monkey named BoBo in a rendition of Jack and the Beanstalk, how the raven got its metallic black feathers, about a talking shoe that makes a girl and her dog famous, of a peace-loving girl from the future who nurses two abandoned polar bear cubs back to health after she rescues them in her flying car... The sky was the limit for me.
    Novels, music, events... everything began to instigate a wild creativity within me. It all just accumulated in a burst of heart for script. Words strung together bloomed into a love of writing that I couldn't shake. New thoughts, ideas, feelings...
    All to create something magical.

    I'm probably one of the first to admit that I am one of the most scatter-brained girls in the Copper Valley. Now, some people may not agree, but they're the ones who have never seen me in a ditzy mode.
    My capricious attitude and sporadic loss of coordination leads to many of my faults, particularly in volleyball. If you're a Kenny Laker, you know the typical procedures of the sport - score a point against the other team and rotate. As the player who has the position of the cover, I'm supposed to be "everywhere." Meaning? I have to be in constant motion covering my teammates and watching the ball. A lot of the time when I'm running around, I forget I have to move out of people's way. This itsy bitsy problem of mine led to quite a collision at the Tok Tournament. During the vying, I did a sort of spin-and-bump in my attempt to keep the ball from the court floor. It then went straight up, and when I failed to disperse fast enough, Deanna Knutson soared over me and hit the ball to the other side of the net with her fist. I didn't know this, seeing as how I was on the floor serving the purpose of a landing-softener  To further the case of my frivolous trait, when the team went back to the starting spots, and I saw that we were still serving, I was flabbergasted – enough to turn to Deanna, in the middle of a play, and ask, “You made that over?”
    For the life of me, I can’t remember when my clumsiness and daffy ways began, but it sure does make stumbling through existence – literally – a remarkable experience.