During the eight years I’ve been writing this column, I’ve often been asked how I write, and where I get my ideas from. For those of you who don’t know, my mother is also a writer. She is the (New York Times bestselling) author Julia Spencer-Fleming. She writes murder mysteries. if I have any natural talent for writing, I’m pretty sure it came from her.

With that said, we have very different writing styles — not just in the literary sense, but in how we actually, physically write. My mom has a proper writing desk by a large window, with a black cat curled up next to her. I’m a millennial and addicted to my phone, so I do everything there.

I draft all my columns in a Google email draft, which is a habit I picked up so long ago I honestly can’t remember how or why I started it. But it’s useful because it allows me to write anywhere, anytime, which I’d like to say I do when the inspiration strikes me in odd places, but mostly it’s because I’m a serial procrastinator. Like my mom.

I don’t know if that’s a standard writer personality trait or if it’s just us. But I’ve written my columns everywhere. When I worked at Target, stocking shelves, I would prop the phone up against the side of a box on the three-tier trolley, right about face height. I’d put a few items on the shelf, then go back to the phone, tap-tap-tap. Shelf, tap. Shelf, tap. Recently, I’ve written while sitting up nursing my child in the middle of the night. I’ve written in more bathrooms than I really want to admit.

These days, when people ask me where I get the ideas for my columns, I have a much easier time answering than my mom, who has to admit that she sits around all day thinking of ways to kill people (murder mysteries). I’ve been lucky enough to have complete creative control and freedom over my writing, although when I first started writing as “The Maine Millennial” coming up with something to talk about every single week was pretty stressful for me.

I was still used to writing for school, where we were assigned a topic. I kept asking my editor at the time to give me a topic, any topic, or at least a hint! He kept refusing to help out. Eventually, I got in the habit of coming up with things on my own.

The overarching “theme” of my column is the experience of being a millennial in Maine, and I will admit that I interpret that very widely. When I was a kid I always loved journaling, but I would get bored or distracted after a few weeks or months. I have a whole pile of cute notebooks from school book fairs that have between three and 20 pages written in them.

But it turns out having to turn in between 700 and 900 words every week in exchange for a small amount of money is a really good motivator to put down words! It is a little ridiculous that I got through 18 years of formal schooling (K-12, college, grad school) and then managed to give myself homework for the rest of my life.

I was once accused in the comments section of one of my pieces of essentially using my column as a journal of my life. I’m going to go ahead and admit that’s absolutely true. For the past eight years and counting, I’ve been writing about the goings-on in my life, which I feel is often pretty average. I guess is the point, to chart the average millennial experience.

My very first column was about my experiences using the dating app Tinder, and now here I am married with a baby. It’s wild to go back to my earlier pieces and think wow, I can’t believe they let this lady take home a baby. I’m not sure how many people have been reading since the beginning but if you have been you know I’ve been lucky enough to go through a lot of journeys.

I’ve column-ed my way through multiple relationships, the purchase of not one but two houses, adopting two dogs, getting sober, staying sober, donating a kidney, getting married and now parenthood, which I suspect is going to be giving me column fodder for at least the next 18 years.

I don’t just talk about my personal life. I also pay attention to the news and to what’s going on around me. I’ve never actually done the math but it feels like maybe half my columns are what I think of as the more opinionated ones, where I’m tackling a subject or an issue and offering my point of view, both as a millennial and as just regular Victoria.

For those pieces, I just look at what’s going on in the world and get all hopped up about it, usually while I’m walking my dogs. Honestly, it’s a good thing I have this column to get my rants out, otherwise I’d be talking my poor wife’s ear off all the time (or, more than I usually do.)

I’ve had more than one person comment online that nobody cares about my opinion and my knee-jerk reaction is to agree with that, because honestly, who am I anyway? I’m just some random chick from Buxton.

But the fact is only subscribers to the newspaper can leave comments, a condition that sort of proves that people do care about my opinion. Otherwise, I’m sure they’d find someone else to pay to read. It’s not like there’s a shortage of writers out there. There isn’t. I know because they’re all friends with my mom.