The Writer Within: How I Became a Writer

This is the first of a new blog series I'm starting, because I'd like to give back to the community of readers and authors that has supported me for the many years of my writing career. For the next few weeks, on my new Monday and Wednesday blog post slots, I'll be addressing writerly things, from how I became a writer (today's topic) to how I personally function as a writer: Do I plan my series? Do I wing it? You'll find out soon!

When I was a child, my mother and father read to me every night before bed. And I'm talking from infancy through my teen years. I was actually really upset when they stopped reading to me, because I missed the bonding time and listening to the various books. As a child, my parents read to me from picture books (of course), but also introduced me to works for older readers, from Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders of Pern to The Black Cauldron series and even, my personal favorite, MagForce 7's The Knights of the Black Earth, Robot Blues, and Hung Out.

On the nights that my mother didn't feel like reading--before I myself could read--she and I would make up our own stories. She still has the first book we ever wrote together, which she typed up on the first Apple Mac ever released to the public. She even started illustrating it. I think these nights inspired me the most, because they showed me I could make my very own stories. I didn't have to always rely on something or someone else to entertain me, and in many cases, this became super useful (unlike a lot of people, I can sit alone, in a room, in silence, not writing or doing anything, and be entertaining myself silently by telling myself a story; I had one boss who asked me why I rarely listened to music while I worked, and it was because I was spinning a tale in my head, and it was more interesting and made the time pass by faster than music would).

That talent has never vanished. I'll be listening to someone talk with one ear and have a story building behind my eyes. I can typically keep track of both the discussion at hand and the one in my head. And honestly, I'm not sure how that ability came about.

Before my teen years, I was an avid reader. As in, I always, always carried a book with me (typically one of the Animorphs), and I rarely spoke with my peers. I was... different. Very different. The one time I tried really interacting with peers by playing soccer, I went the wrong way and almost scored a goal for the other team.

Yeah.

I never really played with anyone after that, at least until Pokemon became popular. Then, man, I was all over that. Pokemon was my jam.

In junior high school, I still read, but less, because I found others like me who were bookish and weird and wrote a lot. These girls had an enormous impact on my life, and I miss them every day (I moved and fell out of touch due to massive anxiety problems and severe, debilitating depression). I'll never forget how we all dove deep into Sailor Moon and other anime (Gundam Wing and Revolutionary Girl Utena were my other two favorites) and wrote stories about them, posted them on our Websites (before Facebook and MySpace existed, most of us had our own Websites!), and discussed them every day. It was fun, and an amazing experience. I still have the enormous board of anime pictures my friends put together for me before I moved, and I'll never get rid of it.

Between fourth grade and junior high, I learned how to code HTML and Java Script on my own. My dad gave me a blank Internet Explorer page with a few tables on it, showed me how to view its source and how to edit and save the document (a text document), and wished me luck. Absolutely everything I know about coding Websites is self-taught. In the following years, my dad helped me with a few bugs, but the majority of the time, I simply viewed the source of a page and figured out what altered what via trial and error. I still code in text documents.

The reason this is important is because around this time, I became a huge, die-hard fan of Digimon, and I created my own Website for it. Through my Website, I met one of my best friends, Kossmoe aka Legend aka Julie. We wrote every night, and built a lifelong relationship through the Digimon FDD community (for those curious, I was the creator of Alana and Horkamon; I never became super popular, but people knew about me, which was kind of cool, even though my characters were totally Mary Sues and often contradicted themselves... hey, I was like 11 and the Internet was new).

I can't even begin to say how huge of an impact Julie and the FDD community (and my fanficitions) had on my writing career. By that time, I'd known for a long, long time that I wanted to be a writer. It was all I wanted to be. The only constant in my life. And through these communities and constant role playing and fanfiction writing, I learned how to tell a good story. I learned how to create memorable characters without making them Mary Sues. I learned how to express myself confidently and eloquently, and without Julie's encouragement and her own passion for writing, I'd likely have never followed through with my passion.

This time of my life--between fourth grade and the end of junior high school--also taught me how to construct long stories with numerous plots. Not all of them were followed through, but I tried. I failed, too. A lot. Perobably the most popular thing I've ever written is a Harry Potter fanfiction called Viktor Krum and the Misinformed Muggle. I still have people asking me when I'm going to update the sequel... and the sad truth is, I probably won't. I don't have time. I wrote the first fanfiction in high school during winter break, and after that, my obsession changed.

I went from reading a ton of books to writing the first few drafts of The Soulbound Curse. Over the next thirteen years, I worked on this single book, learning about the world, the characters, their motivations, and the plot I wanted to expand upon. It took me well over a decade (and numerous rejection letters and e-mails) to be signed. Evolved Publishing, the company that signed me, rejected me four years ago. I returned to them two years after their initial rejection, after a major rewrite of the book, and they agreed to sign me.

But my writing career, and my growth in writing, won't end here. I have so much I want to accomplish still. I became a writer at a young age. When my mom and dad weren't reading me me, I was creating plays and organizing my cousins to act out grand tales of love, loss, dragons, and heroes. I've written plays that have never seen the light of day and whole novels are packed away gathering dust. The moment I started thinking about stories and constructing them in my head, I never stopped.

And I hope I won't until the day I die. I hope that when I'm old and in a nursing home (if I'm not a cyborg by then), I'll be able to stare out the window and not see an empty sky, but dragons and wraiths and demons.

Because, once a writer, always a writer.