It is hard for me to pinpoint the exact moment that I fell in love with literature. For me, books have always been a constant support system, form of entertainment, and a motivational tool. One of my earliest memories revolves around the first book that I ever read by myself. The memory itself is vague, I must have been about four years old, and the only concrete detail I have about the book is that it was about a dog. Nevertheless, this book played a critical role in my development as it was the book I learned to read with. Learning how to read opened up new experiences for me, full of new worlds and exciting adventures. It allowed me to experience anything and everything, all while remaining in my safe little world. After learning how to read, books became my life. Books such as Harry Potter shaped my childhood, taught me morals, developed my character, and helped me find a community of friends who shared similar interests.
The first time I considered myself to be a good writer involved years of failure and an essay contest. In my grade school, each class hosted an essay contest revolving around the importance of Catholic schools. The winner in each grade got to read their essay during a Sunday mass and had the distinct privilege of having bragging rights for the rest of the year. In third grade, I desperately wanted to win that contest. Up until that point, I had seen my classmates win while my essays sat in the dust. That year, I wanted things to be different. I slaved away at my paper, writing draft after draft until I came up with what I believed to be the best page and a half I could create. I won the contest, solidifying in myself the idea that I could be a writer. In fact, I won every contest for the next four years. After that moment, I was seen by my teachers and peers as a writer, and a good one at that. The concept blew my mind, the idea that I could write something that could perhaps mean the world to someone in the same way that books shaped me. I felt powerful when I wrote, power to make people listen to what I had to say, feel whatever I wanted them to. For a nine year old, this feeling was exhilarating. I rarely felt control over anything in my life and here I was with the ability to obtain it.
After I discovered that I could write, I began exploring every form of writing I could. It began with poetry, which evolved into songwriting - a passion of mine to this day. It was through the online fanfiction community, however, that I truly tapped into my creative process. When I was eleven, my parents began to allow me more privileges, one of these being more time on the computer. It was at this time that I stumbled upon the fanfiction community. After finding and admiring some of the work I read, I began to post some of my own. I started a blog where I posted my fanfiction, mostly work in the Harry Potter universe. Although fanfiction has a negative connotation, I owe an enormous amount of my writing abilities to this medium. It is because of these previously established universes that I was later able to craft my own. I learned how to tell a good story, develop characterization, and proper world building techniques. I began to write my own novels and short stories using the skills I learned through fanfiction. All of these stories were posted on the blog, which became surprisingly popular considering it was hosted by a dorky preteen. The critique that I received online was extremely beneficial; the criticism helped me learn about my mistakes and how I could approve upon them. The online community I adopted played such a critical role in my life as it helped shape who I wanted to be as a writer and pushed me to find a style and voice that people wanted to read.
Over the years, my relationship with writing has dramatically changed. I don’t consider myself to be a writer anymore. While I enjoy the physical process of creating characters, building worlds, and putting a pen to the page, the writing process as a whole now terrifies me. The idea of someone reading and judging my work causes me to panic even if that person is myself. I believe this to be the case because I have always viewed writing as a way of having control, giving me the ability to find a perfection that I am not able to have in the real world. As a child, I did not view this mindset as problematic because at the earliest points in my life I thought that I was one of the greatest writers in the world. I had the childlike mindset that I could be anything that I wanted to be if I tried hard and believed in myself. I believed in myself more than anything else in the world. I had no experience, no knowledge of any writers in the literary canon, nothing to compare my own work to. However as I grew up, read more, and exposed myself to beautiful and talented writers, I began to doubt my own abilities. I taught myself to believe that I could never create worlds as beautiful as Tolkien’s or Rowling’s, characters as developed as Austen’s, prose as humorous as Shaw’s. In my mind, if I did not have the ability to write like them, I should not write at all.
I gave up writing. Of course I still wrote academic writing and articles for my high school newspaper, but mustering up the nerve to write a creative piece was nearly impossible. Without writing,a creative outlet to express myself, I developed severe anxiety and depression. Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird described it best when she said, “Until I feared I’d lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” Without writing and literature, I struggled to breathe.- find a way to relate my thoughts and emotions into something positive. It was the darkest point in my life, one where I was consumed in negative thoughts and energy, unsure of how to escape it. It wasn’t until I received help for these outside issues that I could be able to slowly reestablish myself as a writer.
My relationship with writing is awkward at the moment. It is like two people who are civil after their breakup, over the anger and betrayal felt at the beginning of the split, but not quite ready
to be incredibly close anytime soon. There are a lot of pieces that still have to be put together, things
that I have to learn about myself as a writer and my style before I feel fully comfortable with my
own work again. I still have an extreme amount of anxiety in regards to the writing process, racing
thoughts of self-doubt that attempt to pull me off course and discourage me from creating anything.
However, I have extremely good and creative days, ones where the ideas seem to pour from my
fingers and fly onto the page. On those days, I pull up an online writing forum, submit my work, and
nervously await some sort of feedback. Although it is a work in progress, I am extremely lucky to
have the literate background that I do. It was through the absence of writing and reading that I
realized just how important they are to me. I learned that those passions of mine are ones to cherish
and continue with as I continue to mature and develop my own life’s story.
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