Before the age of 12, if you had asked me what my dream job was I would have rattled off a long list that included marine biologist, actress, and zoologist. Author was nowhere near the forefront of my mind, despite my voracious appetite for stories. I was a reader, through and through. Or so I thought.
In middle school, I read a book that I loved so much that I said, “I can do that.” Thus began my poorly plagiarized story which was, in actuality, a self-insert fanfiction of this story. I had a composition notebook that I filled up with character descriptions, random scenes that I wrote in science class, and poorly drawn fairy wings. But after that, I was hooked.
I started writing all the time. I wrote fanfiction, a lot of it. I wrote stories of me and my best friend at the time, usually interacting with a fictionalized version of who we had crushes on. I still have the ripped-out notebook paper stories hidden in a box somewhere. I was still reading everything I can get my hands on.
My next foray into writing a novel was when I decided to become the next Rick Riordan. I wanted to write a Norse mythology series, like the Percy Jackson books. Alas, Rick beat me to it. I didn’t get farther than creating and naming my characters. It took me five years after that to try attempting a novel.
I was still writing though. I dipped my toes into poetry, which I learned was not my skill set. I wrote insane short stories based off of prompts from Tumblr, turning them in to my poor English teachers. I always had a book on me and anytime I had to spare, my nose was stuck between the pages. It was finally freshman year of college that I sat down to write a novel again.
I’ll dedicate a whole other blog post to my first real attempt at writing a novel but when I came home for Christmas that year, I was cleaning my room and going through boxes. In 8th grade, we wrote letters to our senior selves. I took inspiration from that and began writing myself letters every month or so. I found one of my early ones and cracked it open to find horribly messy scrawl. But written in that mess of memories was one simple sentence.
I hope you finally wrote that book we’ve been dreaming of.
-Anna circa 2013
Did I cry? Perhaps. But that was the moment I knew that all of my free time was going to be spent writing for the rest of my life.