For me, writing had a cape
I suppose writing is something I kept pocketed for a while. Or perhaps it is just embedded in my DNA (thanks, mom). It took me a while to realize that I could write. Then I had to realize that I actually couldn't write at all. That is when I really began to write. The disappointment in awakening to my true ability left me desperate to try harder. Instead of writing out of a belief that I was talented, I wrote in order to become talented. It got to a point where, when I showed my writing to editors and publishers, I was encouraged that I did have potential. But I had to get to that point first.
I think I started out like most writers: as a reader. I was confounded by words at three and begged my mom to teach me how to read. Then it was Amelia Bedelia,The Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew. My world of imagination was stretched and prodded. I spent most of my time creating story-lines and acting them out with my friends. We designed new identities and intricate plots to escape into.
I grew some, and then it was the Emily of New Moon series, by Lucy Maud Montgomery (AKA not Twilight). I fell in love with romance, even though in my own quiet world, I was terrified of boys. Then it was The Lord of the Rings, The Little White Horse and Narnia. I was an adventurer, a super-hero. I had powers, even though I couldn't play any sports. I lived in my world of books, meditation and imagination.
In seventh grade, I wrote a paper on Abraham Lincoln. It was angsty and horrible. But my mom picked it up and excitedly declared that I had found my voice. I swelled with meaningless pride as I had no clue what she was talking about. “You've found your voice! Now let's tame it,” she said.
What follows, was probably the taming.
For a while, that meaningless deadly sin hid itself. It did not spark an instant romance, but rather it buried itself. It was, ironically, the angel that reentered my life at exactly the right point. At 14, my poor body was attacked by two different evils: hormones and loneliness. I was home-schooled and all of my friends came from my co-op/church. At 14, because apparently it is wrong to stand up for what is right, we were kicked out. TCOTC, the church, (which my family has fondly nicknamed “The Cult of the Coven”) was fundamentalism at its best. Most teenagers were experiencing hormonal angst, but mine was amplified by actual strife. In the course of a night, I lost every friend I had.
It was then that writing flew in to the rescue.
The following year was the loneliest of my life. I had only one friend that I could trust and he soon became my first boyfriend. We both lived in a twisted world and would push each other farther down into depression. I introduced him into a world of self-mutilation and hate and he introduced me to the world of sexual immorality. He was my world from freshman to junior year.
Basically, the high school years sucked.
I turned to the Internet for friends and relationships. That is when a mysterious thing happened. I bought a notebook with a skull on it and dedicated it to my “emo thoughts.” My one close, female friend was a mysterious angel. We inspired each other. She was as dark, or more so than I. Together, we battled suicidal thoughts and self-mutilation. We made promises to each other, to live and to love. And we both wrote.
Out of nowhere, I was writing songs and poetry. I would post poems online for people to read and was in awe of the response I received. My e-friends convinced me that I was amazing and brought out a defibrillator for that ancient, meaningless pride. In the midst of pitch and muck I had found a haven. When I was shaking too much from tears, I would just write. Get it out and move on.
As all of this, the development of my creative writing style, was happening, my mother watered the original seed she had planted. For composition class, she would have me write a 250-word journal every weekday about the literature we were studying. The essay became a secondary language for me. I would start out with an explanatory punch and wrap it up in a symmetrical bow.
As I grew in poetry and essays, the moment came when they began to intertwine. I would turn in a journal that was a poem or a story. I learned how to write poems that were functional, not emotional. I also began to write “rants,” which were essentially emotionally driven essays. The intersection was an exciting, new level of growth. While I was in extreme hate with myself, an enormous ego grew around my writing.
Writing saved me. It was the only point of hope, the only sense of meaning in life. I remember the first time someone cried while reading one of my poems. The thought that I could provoke intense emotion merely by writing was phenomenal. In my writing, I found a way to define myself, to express and be myself. I needed writing then. It created me.
At some point, during my senior year, I began to wake up. I had dumped that guy, gained some self-confidence, started at a public school and joined a new church. My life bisected. At school, I was a pensive loner, while at church I had some inexplicable, wild popularity. It was that I became less dependent on writing and fell in love with it. I took a poetry class to test out my passion in a public arena. I was encouraged and clung to my pen.
My first English professor in college is the one who shook me out of my daydreams. I was no longer special because of my writing. Instead, my stuff was shredded. I looked back at everything I had ever written and accepted the reality check. I was no writer. I was a would-be writer, an overly-formulaic poet, and to top it all off, a cliché abuser.
My inner-self felt broken.
How could writing have betrayed me? First it swoops in and saves me from myself, only to leave me stranded, a hopeless biology major. I felt cheated on and wanted to be silent. But it was all I knew how to do.
So I wrote. And what I wrote aged. I looked on it as a child and not as a part of me. If it was a part of me I could judge it. But if it was a child, I could teach it.
I was quiet for a while, but continued to grow. This past year of 2010 has been huge for me. Writing and I remarried. My poetry teacher enlightened me with a new definition of poetry. “Poetry is the combination of specific images with music,” she said.
Imagery. That was the key.
The rhythm and melody of word-flow was natural for me. But the images were always lacking. My poetic voice learned how to think and create metaphors. Then I decided to latch onto my childhood dream of creating a novel.
This is where you can find me now.
Poetry and journals are daily exercises to prepare for creating the cadence of a novel. From a young age, it was apparent that I am character-driven. The one I created who has stuck with me through it all is Dave Martini. In every story, he was the true love. Dave Martini was the skater-boy, blonde-haired, blue-eyed god that I never actually fell in love with in real life. But he was my story-man. He was perfect.
But now I can create messy characters. I learned that they don't have to be perfect or godlike. I picked up a character from the mess I was in high school. His name is Shane and he is a crazy, dark writer.
Today, I am a joyful, peaceful kid. I still keep Shane next to me. Unconsciously, I created a character for Shane to fall in love with. Her name is Leila. She is everything I am now. In their story, Leila reaches down to Shane and pulls him up from his burnt pages.
It occurred to me after I had created them, that they were both me. Writing saved me and now I can retell the story. I can reach down and save the narcissistic writer that I was. And after I tell their story, I can tell others. Apparently, writing is embedded in my DNA. I shook off the lint from my pocket, and fell for it.
.
I think I started out like most writers: as a reader. I was confounded by words at three and begged my mom to teach me how to read. Then it was Amelia Bedelia,The Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew. My world of imagination was stretched and prodded. I spent most of my time creating story-lines and acting them out with my friends. We designed new identities and intricate plots to escape into.
I grew some, and then it was the Emily of New Moon series, by Lucy Maud Montgomery (AKA not Twilight). I fell in love with romance, even though in my own quiet world, I was terrified of boys. Then it was The Lord of the Rings, The Little White Horse and Narnia. I was an adventurer, a super-hero. I had powers, even though I couldn't play any sports. I lived in my world of books, meditation and imagination.
In seventh grade, I wrote a paper on Abraham Lincoln. It was angsty and horrible. But my mom picked it up and excitedly declared that I had found my voice. I swelled with meaningless pride as I had no clue what she was talking about. “You've found your voice! Now let's tame it,” she said.
What follows, was probably the taming.
For a while, that meaningless deadly sin hid itself. It did not spark an instant romance, but rather it buried itself. It was, ironically, the angel that reentered my life at exactly the right point. At 14, my poor body was attacked by two different evils: hormones and loneliness. I was home-schooled and all of my friends came from my co-op/church. At 14, because apparently it is wrong to stand up for what is right, we were kicked out. TCOTC, the church, (which my family has fondly nicknamed “The Cult of the Coven”) was fundamentalism at its best. Most teenagers were experiencing hormonal angst, but mine was amplified by actual strife. In the course of a night, I lost every friend I had.
It was then that writing flew in to the rescue.
The following year was the loneliest of my life. I had only one friend that I could trust and he soon became my first boyfriend. We both lived in a twisted world and would push each other farther down into depression. I introduced him into a world of self-mutilation and hate and he introduced me to the world of sexual immorality. He was my world from freshman to junior year.
Basically, the high school years sucked.
I turned to the Internet for friends and relationships. That is when a mysterious thing happened. I bought a notebook with a skull on it and dedicated it to my “emo thoughts.” My one close, female friend was a mysterious angel. We inspired each other. She was as dark, or more so than I. Together, we battled suicidal thoughts and self-mutilation. We made promises to each other, to live and to love. And we both wrote.
Out of nowhere, I was writing songs and poetry. I would post poems online for people to read and was in awe of the response I received. My e-friends convinced me that I was amazing and brought out a defibrillator for that ancient, meaningless pride. In the midst of pitch and muck I had found a haven. When I was shaking too much from tears, I would just write. Get it out and move on.
As all of this, the development of my creative writing style, was happening, my mother watered the original seed she had planted. For composition class, she would have me write a 250-word journal every weekday about the literature we were studying. The essay became a secondary language for me. I would start out with an explanatory punch and wrap it up in a symmetrical bow.
As I grew in poetry and essays, the moment came when they began to intertwine. I would turn in a journal that was a poem or a story. I learned how to write poems that were functional, not emotional. I also began to write “rants,” which were essentially emotionally driven essays. The intersection was an exciting, new level of growth. While I was in extreme hate with myself, an enormous ego grew around my writing.
Writing saved me. It was the only point of hope, the only sense of meaning in life. I remember the first time someone cried while reading one of my poems. The thought that I could provoke intense emotion merely by writing was phenomenal. In my writing, I found a way to define myself, to express and be myself. I needed writing then. It created me.
At some point, during my senior year, I began to wake up. I had dumped that guy, gained some self-confidence, started at a public school and joined a new church. My life bisected. At school, I was a pensive loner, while at church I had some inexplicable, wild popularity. It was that I became less dependent on writing and fell in love with it. I took a poetry class to test out my passion in a public arena. I was encouraged and clung to my pen.
My first English professor in college is the one who shook me out of my daydreams. I was no longer special because of my writing. Instead, my stuff was shredded. I looked back at everything I had ever written and accepted the reality check. I was no writer. I was a would-be writer, an overly-formulaic poet, and to top it all off, a cliché abuser.
My inner-self felt broken.
How could writing have betrayed me? First it swoops in and saves me from myself, only to leave me stranded, a hopeless biology major. I felt cheated on and wanted to be silent. But it was all I knew how to do.
So I wrote. And what I wrote aged. I looked on it as a child and not as a part of me. If it was a part of me I could judge it. But if it was a child, I could teach it.
I was quiet for a while, but continued to grow. This past year of 2010 has been huge for me. Writing and I remarried. My poetry teacher enlightened me with a new definition of poetry. “Poetry is the combination of specific images with music,” she said.
Imagery. That was the key.
The rhythm and melody of word-flow was natural for me. But the images were always lacking. My poetic voice learned how to think and create metaphors. Then I decided to latch onto my childhood dream of creating a novel.
This is where you can find me now.
Poetry and journals are daily exercises to prepare for creating the cadence of a novel. From a young age, it was apparent that I am character-driven. The one I created who has stuck with me through it all is Dave Martini. In every story, he was the true love. Dave Martini was the skater-boy, blonde-haired, blue-eyed god that I never actually fell in love with in real life. But he was my story-man. He was perfect.
But now I can create messy characters. I learned that they don't have to be perfect or godlike. I picked up a character from the mess I was in high school. His name is Shane and he is a crazy, dark writer.
Today, I am a joyful, peaceful kid. I still keep Shane next to me. Unconsciously, I created a character for Shane to fall in love with. Her name is Leila. She is everything I am now. In their story, Leila reaches down to Shane and pulls him up from his burnt pages.
It occurred to me after I had created them, that they were both me. Writing saved me and now I can retell the story. I can reach down and save the narcissistic writer that I was. And after I tell their story, I can tell others. Apparently, writing is embedded in my DNA. I shook off the lint from my pocket, and fell for it.
.