The Student News Site of McCallum High School

The Shield Online

The Student News Site of McCallum High School

The Shield Online

The Student News Site of McCallum High School

The Shield Online

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Hit the books

Senior Kirsten Timco introduces debut novel

As many students struggle to balance their schoolwork with extracurricular activities like sports and volunteer service, senior Kirsten Timco has spent the last seven months tackling a rather unique project alongside her studies.

“I have been writing a book,” Timco said. “It’s about a homeless girl running away from something, and the story essentially talks about her recovery and how she gets through it. Right now it’s about 35 pages, but in print it could be about 60.”

According to Timco, the idea to write a book stems from her extensive interest in writing.

“Well I’ve been writing all my life, and it’s what I really like to do,” Timco said. “I’ve written a lot of essays, short stories, poems. I’m also the supervising editor for Excalibur, which means I get to look at a lot of writing and work on my own. But I felt like one thing I hadn’t really taken on yet was a novel, so I set out to do that.”

Yet Timco says the process of creating the story for her novel proved to be as daunting as it was rewarding.

Photo taken from Kirsten Timco's blog: http://kirstenashleywriting.weebly.com/ .
Photo taken from Kirsten Timco’s blog: http://kirstenashleywriting.weebly.com/ .

“At first I was terrified by the idea of writing a novel,” Timco said. “It started out as a short story about a girl having an affair, who murders the wife of the man she’s having the affair with. But I wrote that and thought, ‘This could be so much more. What if she runs away and lives in complete humiliation?’ And that’s what the premise of the book turned out to be. Once I got started, I did a lot of storyboarding with my friends. Because the main character is a girl our age, I asked my friends questions like, ‘How would you react in this situation?’ or, ‘What would you do if…?’ to help me get ideas. And then I made lots of outlines. Right now I’m still in the editing process. But it’s definitely worth the struggle.”

After Timco makes the finishing touches on her novel, she plans to see if she can have it published.

“Actually right now I’m working on my book portfolio, which is a set of photographs that you make of scenes of the book for the publisher,” Timco said. “Once that and the editing’s done I will be sending it out. But if anyone from McCallum wants to check it out, I also have a blog and I will be putting the novel up on there by the end of spring break.”

For those hoping to write novels in the future as well, Timco encourages anyone to pursue the idea if they are passionate about writing.

“It’s hard, but definitely do it if you want to because it’s so fulfilling,” Timco said. “I’m so proud of myself for doing something that big. And if you can get your novel published, just think about how good that can make you feel, how impressive it will be to say, ‘Oh, I published a book when I was 18.’ I think if I can experience that feeling it will make everything so much more rewarding.”

 

Anyone wanting to reach Timco’s blog can find it at: http://kirstenashleywriting.weebly.com/

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