My Journey as a Writer

I don’t remember waking up one morning and deciding I wanted to write for the rest of my life. According to my mom, my kindergarten and first-grade teachers said that I was a good writer, but I have no memory of what I wrote at six years old (and what did that mean, to be a good writer at six years old?). What I do know is that I started reading from a young age and devoured books like there was no tomorrow. I remember volumes of fairytales, the Little House on the Prairie books, and I had an animal obsession when I was little, so I loved any story I could get my hands on that included talking animals. I still love stories, but I wish I could say I still had that unhindered appetite for books that I had when I was little. I think we all wish we could say that.

I do remember second grade. We had a class assignment where we had to write creative stories, and it was the only thing that filled my mind for a solid month. My animal obsession had narrowed to dolphins for that time, so I wrote a story about a mother dolphin and a baby dolphin on the run from an evil orca. It probably had illustrations to go with it, too, and I desperately wish I could find those pages of notebook paper stuffed in a drawer somewhere (I still remember that the dolphins were named Hazel and Alissa). Anyway, from then on I never stopped writing. I wrote more stories about my dolphins, and when I got bored of that, I wrote more and more.

And more and more.

And more.

You get the point.

My parking space for my senior year of high school

In middle school, writing became more than a fun way to write about animals; it became a way to process my emotions and experiences. I started keeping a journal (anyone else deathly afraid to go back and read their seventh-grade diary?), but I didn’t stop writing fiction. I started viewing writing as a way of saying something about the world. I know different writers have different philosophies on what stories should do or “mean,” but I’m most passionate when I’m writing while trying to say something, to mean something. This began with writing about the injustices of middle school. I was dealing with loneliness, insecurity, crushes, conflicts with friends—all the usual tween things. So I worked through my issues by turning all of my friends and frenemies into horses and dropping them into a magical world. When I started writing, I didn’t plan for anyone to ever read it, but that little book became four more little books, so apparently I had a lot to say. My friends read it, loved it, and gave me ideas for more stories.

Looking back, I made a lot of drama out of nothing in middle school (but who doesn’t?). The boys who were mean to me weren’t really that mean, and I definitely believed that they were thinking about me more than they were. My friends weren’t in love; they just had little crushes. Most of the story was entirely fictional—epic battles, magic spells, even dramatic deaths—but beneath all the wild plots were the raw and unprocessed emotions of a seventh-grader. When I finished the story, I printed it using a self-publishing website, and it was the first time I held my work in book form, and every night before bed for a long time, I would reread chapters, even just to hold the book in my hand. After graduating middle school, I also ended up sharing the book with some younger girls who wanted to read it, and I remember that all I wanted was to help them, to tell them that I knew all the middle-school-ness and that I had come out on the other side of it. Being so vulnerable had given me something to be proud of, but it was also the best way I knew how to love people.

My face when my mom interrupts me while I’m writing (:

Many awful teenage dystopians and painful sonnets later, I was a senior in high school. The fall of my senior year was genuinely my favorite season of my life. I like to joke that I’m convinced that I peaked at seventeen, but my parents are always quick to assure me otherwise, so I won’t say that. I was given the incredible opportunity by my high school theater director to write and stage-manage my school’s fall play. I had never written a play before, but my dad had encouraged me to try it, and by the beginning of senior year, I had presented my director with draft #3 of a script that very much still needed work. He decided to take a chance on me, and I will forever be grateful that he did; the experience changed my life. I helped cast the show, rewrote extensively, and eight weeks later, our school auditorium was packed for opening night. During those eight weeks, you couldn’t catch me not smiling. After dealing with a lot of insecurity about my writing the year before, I was the most confident I had ever been, and I realized just how many people there were around me to encourage and support me. My once-private writing life became extremely public, and storytelling became a very communal project. The cast helped me rewrite and interpreted my work on stage, the crew built an incredible set for the characters to play in, and the audience was kind enough to laugh at all my jokes and applaud at curtain call. Writing became most fun when I got to share it with those I care about.

I also spent my senior year writing a novel as an independent project (some called me crazy) under the advising of two of my favorite teachers. To this day, that novel is my pride and joy. Again, I found myself wanting to mean something out of the world, and I learned so much about myself through writing it. The story formed many of my beliefs about love and its place in the world. And again, I was surrounded by so many people who were asking to read it and were encouraging me as a writer. My dream is to see it on the shelf of a bookstore one day (wish me luck trying to get it published!), because like I’ve said, being vulnerable is the best way I know how to write and how to love people.

The poster for my senior play, written by me!

So here I am, about to finish my freshman year of college, and I’m still writing voraciously, still hoping with all my eighteen-year-old heart that I’ll see my name in Barnes & Noble one day. It’s a fun thing to dream about, and maybe that’s also why I’m still writing: because I don’t know what else to do with my daydreams.

I guess I’ll end with addressing you, reader, you who are kind enough to have listened to me ramble on for far too long about the thing I love most. To anyone else who finds themselves with a pen in their hand…

Write because it makes you happy. Write to love people. Write because it’s a lot scarier to look someone in the eye and tell them exactly how you’re feeling. Write to make some kind of meaning out of this mixed-up and and terrifying and wonderful world we call home.