It’s All Personal

I noticed since I was young that I have always adored reading and writing. I read lots of chapter books when I was going through kindergarten and first grade, starting with The Berenstain Bears and working my way up to books like The Illuminae Files and Rot and Ruin. I found myself loving all types of literature, and I was so deeply immersed in storytelling as a whole that I struck out to tell my own, weaving tales together all stemming from my brain. Even as a kid, you have a gradually increasing understanding of creativity and imagination, and just how far it can take you in your life. If you spend five to ten minutes just sitting still and thinking, you can see whole other worlds and things, created just with your mind in an instant. Our brains are so profoundly strong and interesting that these things are second nature to us. 

When I first wrote, it was a story about the meaning of love. It was all emotional, using the best words I had access to with my six or seven year old brain. My parents loved it, and they forecasted great things in my future (as most parents do when they see their child do anything interesting). Even from then I knew it was going to be a cool thing to pursue, to really give my brain to and sink my teeth in. I kept writing afterwards, gaining experience and knowledge as I went on, learning how to craft better stories, approach from better angles, and going as far as to take vocab quizzes outside of school (if you can believe it), just to make sure I was always improving. I took a lot of inspiration from the books I was reading, and as I got older my interests changed and I read more diverse books. 

One of my first and all-time favorites is The Timekeeper’s Moon, by Joni Sensel. She told such an interesting and fun story, about a strange fantasy world that really felt new and exciting. Whenever I read something like that it would inspire me more to create my own worlds and fantasies, and to really bring them to life. I read a lot more when I was younger, focusing on it and actually listening to the stories like a true reader should. I also read a lot because it helped me be calm, and immerse myself in something other than my reality, which is a reason that I feel many people can relate to. It feels really good to leave, if only for a little while, and to embrace anything that's new or different just for a sense of diversity, whether it be visual or physical or somewhere in-between. 

My life outside of writing and reading got intense for long periods of time. I struggled with some trauma after my biological father passed, and even though I was too young to understand it for what it is, the feelings still got to me. When I had my books with me and my own personal stories and songs I’d make up, those helped push all of that away, and authors like Joni Sensel helped push reality into the background, so I started to rely upon that as a resource. 

As I grew older, I read many more books, and fell in love with many more authors. Another author whose work did affect me more than I thought, is Claudia Gray. I haven’t read everything of hers, but was soul-searching for a science-fiction book that wasn’t cliche or uninteresting, and I stumbled upon Defy The Stars and I was enthralled by it. I loved her view of space, of the world, of her characters, and I genuinely enjoyed a romance novel for the first time in my life. As someone who could frequently talk about love and what it means, I had never liked the idea of watching or reading it. It made me feel weird inside, like I was watching something false be portrayed before my eyes. Every work of romance, fictional or non-fictional, made me feel the same weird feeling. There was always that sense of loss after reading something like that, at least for me.  But Claudia Gray’s work didn’t give me that feeling. 

Defy The Stars is a great read, and it helped me better understand how someone could portray the idea of love and familiarity fluidly, without leaving room for the uninteresting parts, like all of the intense flirting, ceaseless jokes and prods and nudges and even the concept of cutsie dates and scenes. It all feels very odd to watch and read. Mind you, all of these things are fun and entertaining in reality, but in media it's often hard to truly relate to what’s being given, but authors like Claudia Gray, Nicholas Sparks and Peng Shepherd, have told me stories about love that have shaped my perspective on how it should be expressed. 

When I write about love and emotions I introduce what feels like realism to me, and the same applies to my dialogue and my storytelling. The way that I convey a story to you is as if the story was always there, like the people already existed and their feelings and stories have already been told. I want you as the reader to embrace the idea of entering a world that already existed before you, that has life to it whether or not you were there to begin with. 

Love in itself is a touchy subject, but it isn’t so crazy to say that it isn’t hard to write or capture, but there is definitely a challenge to be met. People should be able to feel what the characters feel, and relate on such a level that when your character gets hurt emotionally, there’s a reaction in the reader’s heart and mind. The reader’s level of sympathy should be able to connect to the author’s. I could tell you a sob story about my life and all of my hardships and try to rope you into my world, but my world already happened. My world existed before I met you, so in my mind I want to speak to you directly, person to person, to tell you how I feel about things and share my perspective without weighing you down with my IRL exposition. But there is some merit in telling a full story.

All of my life I have suffered from social anxiety, which is a mental disorder that, at least in my case, gives me a very unpleasant and unwelcome feeling when I’m around people. No matter what I think or truly feel in the moment, my body will react. I could be happy with someone, or hanging around my best friend, and my stomach will be churning, my thoughts will be racing and my brain will pump stress like there’s no tomorrow. 

When I was younger, roughly my middle-high school years, I felt it more intensely. As I got older and my personality changed I felt everything everyone said more directly. Words that never used to bother me suddenly had weight to them, actions suddenly had strong effects. My clothes felt wrong, my skin felt gross, my everything became a mess of emotions and unnecessary thoughts. You’re too this, you’re too that, change this, eat that, feel this, want that. I could never escape it then, and I still struggle now.

I only ever had one true escape, and that was running away from it all. But how do you run away from reality itself? The true answer is: You can’t. But the more appealing and easily chosen answer is, distractions. My favorite things. I picked up gaming, started watching movies and tv more regularly, read a lot more, and even picked up some minor hobbies, like collecting state quarters (quarters with states on the back of them. I had a whole book that was only missing 3 to be fully complete, but I lost it in a move). Distractions saved me from those moments where I felt completely lost to the world, and I discovered that writing, and even showing my writing to other people, was a way cooler thing than just crying to myself about how I felt I smelled after school. So I wrote.

I wrote page after page and I showed off some of the biggest collective stories I had ever written (20 pages)! It was a game changer. Having the ability to make my own stories and share them was the best possible thing I ever realized I could do. I had supportive teachers, supportive friends and my own brain to rely on for once. I could get away from the world without having to actually leave it. This became my priority in life, and while it has always been a dream to write and produce my own books (one that I managed to accomplish, minor flex), it was even more of a necessity to give myself something positive to focus on, rather than negative and hurtful thoughts. But life still happens, regardless of what you say and do, things will still bring you down, and people, whether they say things to me or not, will always be a negative in my life. 

Trying to remove myself from the pain and trauma never worked out well, but the more I read, the more I realized that the stories I was so stuck on were of a caliber that I could reach, I knew I could do it, and as I tried and failed, eventually I produced my own book, encapsulating all of my emotions into several stories and ideas, making something that I am still extremely proud of to this day. So, to prove my earlier point, the IRL exposition can be necessary sometimes, but I hope this was a good and relatable example of how to do it in an okay and non-cliche kind of way. For you, the reader, I hope you feel as though I sat here and spoke to you as a person, because you deserve nothing less. As for the prompt, I’m pretty sure I struck that chord a few times but I’ll give my last example towards it. The Book of M, by Peng Shepherd. 

This book is by far my favorite of all time. I only picked it up in the library because the cover was cool (because everyone judges books by their covers). When I initially read it, my mindset of the type of story being told was straightforward: Apocalypse, people struggling to survive, moral compass, the works. But her idea of the shadows and memories and how they could be supernaturally linked is exceptional. Her take on the apocalyptic concept is very unique and explored in a mysterious and rather, gracefully unexplained, kind of way. She really makes you want to read more and figure out the world and the characters in it, and embrace the love story at its core. 

I wanted to know what her meaning of love was, how far she thought one should go, what it meant for her characters and their lives. When an author can make you invested like this, and have you genuinely glued to the pages, there’s a very satisfying feeling that comes from finishing their work. It feels like true art, and like the person has really dedicated themselves to honing their style and their craft. This is what I strive for, and what I’m teaching myself how to do. 

I want the reader to be sucked into my world, and think about it outside of the book. I want to engrave things in people’s heads and make them cry and laugh when my characters do. I have a deep and strong passion for writing and the art of storytelling as a whole, and I have planted what I feel is the strongest foot deep in the earth. I published a book, not just my first one that was fifty-two pages, but my real first book, which came out to be five-hundred and eighty-four pages of some of my best work. I dove into everything I learned, tried my hand at new techniques and styles, hired an interior formatter to make it pop and then boom! Just like that, I had truly accomplished my dream. 

This is how reading has affected me as an individual. From a young age I’ve dreamt of pursuing it as a career and a personal hobby. I love to write, and I love to make people feel things that I write. There is something so pure that comes from watching someone react to what you make, it's very real and raw. When you can really make someone say, “Wow,” at the end of something, or even make them cry or hug you, that feeling is intense and something worth improving for. 

I’m happy to say that these authors and books that I mentioned have changed me for the better, and taught me that there’s a real reason to make these stories and share them with people, and that there really is an audience for everyone. I hope you enjoyed reading this, because I enjoyed writing it. I like fiction more than anything but insight is knowledge and knowledge is power and so on. I appreciate your time, if you made it here. If you didn't, that's okay, I skip sometimes too, we’re human.