Hello Ink-Stained Dreamers!
I’m so excited to write this post because this really made me reflect on my writing journey all the way up until now.
I wasn’t much of a writer until I got into eighth grade, but before that I was really into reading, and I read A LOT. Most of the books were random so I don’t remember every single one I read, but the ones I do remember were odd or just not in the normal realm of what kids would typically read. There was one book I remember that I had from my school’s library that had a bunch of short stories all combined into one giant book. These short stories were weird, meaning they were about giants with one eye or marrying an ugly witch, etc. I don’t remember the name of the book, but I was obsessed with it, and I think that’s where my attraction to the weird and odd started.
Although, I believe I gravitated towards those books because I was told I was weird all the time. I never understood until recently why people told me that, but I never took it as an insult. My thought process was, if I was being told I was weird or odd, why not embrace it and lean into it?
Anyways, when I hit seventh grade, I distinctly remember pulling out Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and liking it. I didn’t really like it because it was freaky and did give me nightmares, but I liked it because it was different. Just like I felt I was. I can still picture the cover in my mind so clearly and I think it’ll haunt me till the day I die. But I felt a real connection with this book because it brought me together with other people who were also labeled as “weird” or “odd” but, in reality, were really cool people who didn’t “conform” to normal standards. I loved these types of people and found myself attracting them.
Finally, I went into eighth grade, and I just remember feeling this urge to write something, to write a story. I don’t know how this feeling got brought up, but I remember thinking “well, I love stories so much, why don’t I try writing my own?” And that’s what I did. I wrote the beginning of a story in a random journal I think one of my friends had given me (I’m not sure if that’s 100% correct, it’s been a long time…). Funnily enough, I still remember what the journal looked like, yellow with soft florals on the cover. What’s even funnier is I think I remembered it because the cover was squishy and whenever I was writing I would press my fingers against the cover for fun. It was an interesting journal to say the least, but it was the beginning of my writing journey for me.
After I started writing in the eighth grade, I remember accumulating so many journals, writing pads, etc. and using them to write different stories, build characters and worlds, and just…write. At the time, the only reason I had for me writing was just because I thought it was fun, and I had such an active imagination it was an outlet for me to write down whatever crazy thing I thought of. However, because it was an outlet for me, I was religious about keeping everything a secret. My family knew I was writing, but when they’d ask to read, I would lose my mind and refuse. I didn’t want them to judge me (as all middle school students fear) because I knew my writing was very rudimentary aside from it being really personal. My writing was a path to my desires, my heart, my soul that I could not let even the closest people to me see. I was already judged and outcasted for who I was already, and I was not going to add oil to that fire.
Then I started high school, and this was an even bigger trial for me. I read more than I wrote (if I remember correctly) because I needed a quicker escape from reality and my writing was going nowhere but the paper. So, I read books like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, The Last Apprentice, and Skulduggery Pleasant. I did read smaller series that I loved, but these series saved me from the hell that was my high school experience, and I still have all my original copies from high school. My family continues to tease me about selling my books because they know I never will, but that just goes to show how much space books hold in my heart.
Anyways, high school was a blur for me and was a build-up to one of the most difficult times in my life. After I graduated in 2017, I did a semester at my local community college before attending a year at BYU-Idaho in 2018 (I was previously Mormon). There I met my best friend (of whom I am still best friends with seven years later) and found out she liked writing too! Up until then I was writing in the sense of creating characters, plots, scenes, and maybe getting a chapter or two done, but that was it. I had never written a full story. Never got more than two chapters in before I moved onto the next idea.
It wasn’t until I left for my mission for the LDS church that I got more into writing.
I was gifted a journal from my grandparents which was the first time I had been given one that I didn’t use for creative writing purposes. At first, I really sucked at writing in it, but once things started to decline at the Missionary Training Center, I began writing and I wrote religiously. I won’t go into details about what happened on my mission, but I will say that I filled that entire journal in detail with what had been happening to me on my mission, and it was not good. But knowing what I know now, this experience is what currently gives me inspiration to write.
After returning home early from my mission completely broken and at rock bottom, I wrote and wrote. I still did the same cycle of writing down cool characters, plots, settings, etc. But I had a different purpose behind it. Yes, it was still fun for me, but I wanted to create a story for myself, and I started caring less about what people would think about my stories but cared more about creating something that spoke to my soul, my broken spirit, and my experiences. So, I just kept writing, imagining, and creating.
At one point, I did write a full story with a beginning, middle, and end, but it was BAD. And I mean, BAD. But I did it and I felt accomplished. I just remember thinking “see, I knew we could do it.” It was an amazing experience for me, and it pushed me closer to where I wanted to be. I graduated from the University of Utah with a Bachelor’s in Writing and Rhetoric and was trying to find a job as an editor, which I have come to find is the one of the most difficult jobs to get into but kept writing. I returned home to Sacramento, California at the end of 2022 working at Starbucks as a shift supervisor and learned a lot about myself for the next three years.
The things I learned about myself helped me realize why I was writing and the underlying issues that I needed to come to terms with. I’ll give you an example that stemmed from my missionary experience because I still feel very passionate about it and why I’m using it to create stories.
After my missionary experience, I had internally vowed to myself that I would never let anyone tell me who to be, how to act, nor allow someone to ridicule me or shame me for who I was and how I reacted/act either. The underlying issue I was dealing with was that I wanted to belong, so I felt that I needed to “hide” or “change” myself to be accepted. (I have now learned I was “masking” which is an autistic trait that allow neuro-divergent people blend into a neuro-typical ruled world, but at the time I had no idea what I was doing, nor did I realize the consequences of doing it for so long either). I have come to terms with the underlying issues and found their source as well, but I will never not be passionate about letting people be who they are without ridicule or judgement.
So, to answer the prompt in simple terms, the reason why I write is because I want to create a place where people who have feel like they were/are never enough, who feel they are different and weird, who feel like they never belong anywhere, for those who never felt like a first choice, for anyone who has gone through something that completely changed their whole perspective of people and their intentions in a negative way, and create a place they can call home, where they can feel accepted exactly as they are. I write so that I know that I am important. That I am enough. That I am weird, awkward, different and that’s the best way to live my life. I write for my inner child who felt she needed to hide and never felt enough. I write for my inner teenager and young adult who was bullied for being “different” and doing things her own way. I write for the current me who fights for what’s right and wants to protect her peace. I write for me.
-Your Potion-Sipping Storyteller
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