Chapter One: Writing

Writing to me is like entering a world where you control everything that happens. You are the writer, you are the creator, you the one who decides what the normal standard is for everything. No one is telling you what to do or who has to be in your story. You get to decide what your characters are going to do, and who they are going to be. Writing is like making a world that is, in your mind, perfect. Whether your idea of “perfect” is skewed or not, doesn’t matter because you get to decide.

For me writing is a place of escape. When things are rough, I write in a fashion that seems to make the struggles disappear. My characters get to play my role, they go through what I’m feeling and almost seem to help me deal with things. They are me. All of them, from the girl who lost her sight to the little boy who runs up and down the hill with his dog. For me writing is real. It comes alive. I feel everything that flows from my fingertips.

Writing can also be very emotional. There are times when I am writing and find myself crying. Why? I don’t know. It’s like I become who I am writing, and when I finish something I almost feel a sense of regret that it’s over because it feels like I have just lived so many other lives. And now I have to go back to my normal life until a new story develops.

I didn’t always like writing. In fact I never wrote any type of story until about a year or two ago. My younger sisters always wrote, and I thought what they did was pretty good so I never gave much thought to doing it myself. When they wanted to have a competition to see who could write the best story I thought I would give it a shot and see how far I could go. Well, I started and they started and then they stopped and I never did. I loved it. It took hold of me and thoughts and ideas literally started flowing through my mind. I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed it. It seemed impossible that I could write anything. I mean I thought I hated writing!! How on earth then could I all of the sudden love it? I think the fact that I could control everything that happened and that I could make sense of what was happening in my own life through someone else’s life seemed incredible.

Writing isn’t always fun though. There are times when I am stumped for days on where to move forward. But it is also exciting because looking around things that you would never think of seemed to jump from obscurity and inspire in ways one would only imagine. Writing has its pros and cons just like anything else. But I believe that the good outweighs the bad.