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Hello everyone, my name is Donna and I live in Shreveport,
Louisiana. I was born and raised right outside of New Orleans and moved here after Hurricane Katrina blew into town and destroyed
everything including my house and place of employment. The last few years have been a time of renewal for me. Writing has
always been my love, but I put it off to get married, raise my kids, and have a career. Now it is time to continue my love
affair with writing.
I first new I was a writer when I was in the third grade.
We were given an assignment to write an essay on patriotism and the teacher submitted them in a contest for the Veteran's
Administration. My essay won first place in our school and I had to read it in front of the entire student body and faculty.
It was then I realized that what I wrote could affect people. I was 8 years old.
I continued writing all through high school for my school newspaper.
After graduation, marriage, and 4 kids my writing got put on hold for awhile. I took some creative writing classes, kept a
journal and occassionaly wrote stories for the kids. When I bought my first computer in 1998 things changed. A whole new world
was opened to me. I found a site online where I could write stories and enter them in contests every week.
The Amazing Instant Novelist site on AOL was a great place to meet other
writers, have them read and critique my work and it gave me a wonderful opportunity to hone my editing skills. It's where
I learned to write an entire story in 250 words or less. I made some great friends there and because of their encouragement
and support it wasn't long before I was winning or placing almost every week. What I learned there is invaluable to me
as a writer and I will forever be greatful for the opportunities I had there.
Life somehow has a way of intruding on our best laid plans. After going
through a divorce, going back to school at 42 to get a degree in nursing, and learning to make my own way with the kids, writing
once again had to take a back seat. The desire was still there and the love of the craft, but there simply wasn't time.
Hurricane Katrina changed a lot of lives. There is no way to describe
watching the city that you know and have loved your entire life destroyed in a matter of hours; everything you've worked
for and achieved gone. It was horrible, unbelievable and terrifying, but I was one of the lucky ones. I had family that took
in me and my four children who had also lost everything including their jobs. They gave us time to recover and breath and
helped us to start a new life here in Shreveport and for that I will be forever grateful.
When you are standing on someones doorstep with basically the clothes
on your back life takes on a whole new meaning. Things that mattered before don't seem quite as important anymore It's a chance
to start over and rethink things. In my case, it was a chance to reconnect with the one thing that had always been my resting
place, my writing. It's what I want to do. It's what my heart longs to do and so I am a writer.
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Celebrate
Life
We can find inspiration to write everywhere, the colors of a
sunset, the laughter of a child, the rustle of leaves on a tree.
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There is inspiration in nature
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