Paper Butterflies - An Autobiography

This is the story of my writing journey - mostly. some elements, like people's names and exact conversations are made up - partly for privacy reasons, partly because I forgot.

If you are looking for a drama-filled, super entertaining story where the dog makes it to the end, this is not the story for you. If you are looking for a simple read about your average Joe, it is up to you whether or not you enjoy it. I am warning you; this is mostly for me, because I want to do this, so it will have its fair share of grammatical mistakes, rabbit trails, and made-up words.

I hope you enjoy!

I have been writing on Reedsy for a few months now - and in that time I have met several new friends, read many fantastic stories, and greatly expanded my love for writing.

I always wanted to write. By the time I was eight; I had completed a four-chapter novel about a cat who traveled to the jungle. At the time, it seemed so long and so refined - but looking back on it now, it was like, ten pages long and consisted almost entirely of dialogue from a minor character.

The point is, I have always loved to write - I'm not saying I'm good at it, I'm just saying I love it.

Back in 2020 (Wow, that feels like so long ago!), I had begun working on a new series - yet again about cats. I am a simple person. This time it was a six-book series with six main characters, two abrupt plot twists, and a major villain with an army of ghost wolves. Pretty cool, am I right?

Two months later, I didn't think so. I ditched the cats idea - with great difficultly - and decided to keep looking for my "thing".

Flash to the future; a couple of friends and I (Lets call them Gracie, Elinor, and Amber) got together for a sleepover at Gracie's house. It was late December, freezing cold, and we were very highly caffeinated. After a full evening of charades, pizza making, and binge-watching movies; my friends and I were finally winding down for bed - it was past midnight, and Amber had a swim meet in the early morning.

Only problem? You try to get a few overly-sugared preteen girls to abruptly go to bed and stop throwing things at each other, and then tell me it is easy. I dare you.

Gracie and Amber fell asleep pretty easily, but Elinor and I had more difficulty.

Here is the thing: I knew Gracie and Amber pretty well, but I had never really interacted with Elinor. She seemed... Well, to be brutally honest, she seemed stuck up. Her blond hair was always perfectly straight, her clothes always neat and tidy, and she was always polite - and still is. Don't get me wrong - I have nothing against politeness, but compared to what I am used to, it was just... Uncomfortable.

Naturally, we started talking - just the usual;

"How are your siblings?"

"Good. Yours?"

"Pretty good."

"That's nice."

"Yeah."

...

You get the gist.

After a few awkward attempts at conversation, we eventually just settled down and started reading comics - you know, Garfield and all that good stuff.

Amber and Gracie took their turns waking up and joining us, but they both fell back asleep eventually.

Two Garfield books later, one of us (I don't remember who) made another attempt at conversation. It worked.

We talked about Garfield, and neighbor problems, and eventually just started laughing and talking and just really getting to know each other.

At around 1:00 AM, we started getting tired - and decided to do origami to keep us awake. We had made a goal to stay up to at least 3:00 AM - a goal that would leave us breaking the boy's record.

Let me explain: The boys at our church had stayed up to 2:00 AM and were very proud of their record. Gracie and I had tried to break their record earlier, but she fell asleep at around 10:00 - leaving me, a night owl with a messed-up sleep schedule, to entertain myself until I fell asleep around midnight.

I warned you there would be rabbit trails.

Elinor and I were all set - loads of sugar, plenty of books, lots of paper - and a goal of 100 paper butterflies by 3:00 AM.

Halfway through, we decided that after we were done; we would hide all of our finished butterflies in Gracie's older brother's room.

Trust me, these butterflies were only about the size of a quarter. He still hasn't found them all, one year later.

We continued talking, and we discovered that we are actually a lot alike. We both like books, for example. We also discovered that we both love dragons, drawing, and many other things - including Lord of the Rings. "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"

We kept talking and laughing, and folded dozens upon dozens of paper butterflies.

After quite a while, we realized that we had succeeded in staying up past 3:00 AM.

A small feat, but a victorious one.

At that point, we were in too good of a mood to go to sleep, so Elinor just laughed and said "What the heck? Let's just pull an all-nighter."

And so we did.

The boys were disappointed when we called them the next morning to tell them that we had broken their record by a long shot, staying up until 10:00 PM the next day. Needless to say, Gracie's brother was even more disappointed to hear that we had hidden 100 paper butterflies in his room.

I am feeling like a rabbit trail, so I will explain the dog thing now.

Around this time, we had to get rid of our mutt, Charlie.

Not a huge important ground breaking thing, I just wanted to throw in the thing about dogs never making it to the end, because they rarely do. So there. (No offense to all the dog people out there who probably hate me now).

Elinor and I started hanging out after that, I gave her advice for her book, and she tried to help me come up with an idea for mine.

I remember one time especially; she had me over, and we were sitting in her bedroom, drawing. We talked more about her book, and she showed me how it was coming - pretty decent. And then she said it.

Six words, eight syllables, one lightbulb moment.

"We should write a book together."

If you have read my bio, you can probably guess where this is going.

If not; we are almost done with our first book! It is a three-book fantasy series that we hope to someday publish - after a lot of refining.

It has been a lot of hard work, but we make progress every day - and I truly believe that we can do this.

To make things infinitely better - my brother promised that if we finished the first 15 chapters by the end of December, he will take an icebath!

Watch out, Si, we are almost done!

I have written quite a few stories - including the ones for Reedsy - but by far my favorites are the ones I write with Elinor.

So, yes. that is the story of my writing journey. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed living it out!

Special thanks to:

Amber, for being my muse and inspiration.

Gracie, for first accepting me into Path.

Ains, for purely existing.

Shadow, for being an awesome friend.

Si, for giving us a worthy goal - you WILL be taking that icebath!

Mom and Dad, for always encouraging me and letting me constantly steal the computer to work on one of my many projects.

And most importantly Elinor - you know what you did.

Love y'all!