I decided to be a writer. So a writer I will be.

I wrote my first book when I was four. My grandma even helped me bind it. I don’t remember what it was about and neither does she, but she has that memory. She told me that she encouraged me to write it because she knew I loved stories. When we would play Barbies together, I was in charge, and she would simply have to play as a character in my stories. She said I would cry and cry if she didn’t play the part right. My abuelita (great grandmother) would even refuse to play with me because I was too bossy when it came to the story. I was “bossy” about a lot of things as a kid. I was interested in hearing and reading crazy stories. I remember in third grade I practiced reading to the class during recess, holding the book so that my imaginary audience could see the pictures. I remember reading Tuck Everlasting in fifth grade; I don’t remember a lot about it anymore, but I do remember imagining all the what-ifs as I read and being surprised and a little disappointed when I didn’t guess which way the story would go. 

I started planning my own novels in the fifth grade, the same year I read Tuck Everlasting. I also read Twilight, which I figure I should mention since the first few outlines were about vampires and werewolves and other supernatural things. I tried to fit all my favorite things into one story, and I ended up with my heroine having at least fifty different superpowers. I hand wrote over a hundred pages of this story before I became overwhelmed and abandoned it. Over time, I ended up collecting at least a hundred notebooks that were half (or less) filled with pieces of stories that would never see the light of day. Some were good; others, not so much. As I got older, I found myself getting more serious about finishing a story, but my ideas felt too big and the task was too daunting. I never got farther than the set up in any draft, and my outlines often remained incomplete, without an end. Sometimes I spent months in the worldbuilding and got so lost in the details that I couldn’t even remember why I was excited about this story. I started not to trust myself to finish anything, and I have vivid memories of me saying over and over to friends and family, “Oh, I’ve never finished a story.” In high school, I found a piece of an idea hiding in a forgotten green notebook that piqued my interest. I spent a while worldbuilding, some time outlining, a few months drafting. I forgot about the project and then remembered it again, many times. I worked on my draft over many years. It still isn’t finished. 

In college, I became an English major because I wanted to write stories. I was excited to finally learn the secret of following through. My intro to creative writing class was hard. Every time I was asked to write a short story, I’d suddenly have a new idea for a much longer piece, something of monumental size, that would never work for the assignment. I’d get wrapped up in the what-ifs of the story, following my own mind down the rabbit hole. I began to lose hope that I’d ever finish anything. A couple of semesters went by, and I wrote two short stories for a different creative writing class. One was really short, only five pages, unfinished, and no one really liked it. The second was my first masterpiece. It was a real story, and it was finished, and I loved it. It’s the first piece I ever finished and never felt the need to go back to finish the what-ifs. 

Around this time, I read On Writing by Stephen King. I had never read any of his books, but I loved the movies that were based on his novels, especially The Shining and Children of the Corn. It fascinated me that he was so successful in his writing career. I read On Writingmostly for a class but also because I wanted him to tell me how to do it. I was surprised a little disappointed to learn that he didn’t know. A lot of his advice, however, stuck with me, and one thing that comes to mind often is the nail on his bedroom wall that held all his rejection letters, which “by the time [he] was fourteen […] would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. [He] replaced the nail with a spike and kept on writing” (King 41). I had never submitted anything ever before, because I had never finished anything ever before, but also because I was afraid to be rejected. I didn’t do well in my writing classes. Grade-wise, I was fine, but my confidence slipped with each B and C I received, and I compared myself to my peers who wrote clearer than I did, had better ideas than I did, got more A’s than I did. So how was I ever supposed to submit somewhere that was real, somewhere that the rejection I knew was coming would hurt more? 

I prayed about it. I decided to submit to a conference (The International English Honor Society convention), and then I prayed to God and told Him: “If I’m meant to be a writer, this paper will be accepted.” It was a bold ultimatum. I knew that writers get rejected. It took Stephen King years of rejection for his first story to be accepted and then more years until he finally made any real money from a book. Who was I to expect that my very first piece that I ever submitted would be accepted? My prayer scared me so bad that I cried. What it meant was that if my paper wasn’t accepted, I would give up writing and find something else. But I didn’t know what else there was. I had always wanted to be a writer. 

My paper was accepted. It was called “The Trailer,” and it was a piece of creative nonfiction that I wrote in my intro to creative writing class. I hadn’t considered when I wrote it that it was really that good. But it was accepted. I went and presented it at the conference; I didn’t win any of the awards, but I didn’t care. My paper was accepted. I was meant to be a writer. But then that begged the question: how was writing supposed to fit into my life? God confirmed that writing would be a part of my future, but what was that supposed to look like? The same semester I presented my paper, I was taking a memoir and autobiography class. I only took the class because I needed another writing class. I read a lot of memoirs and learned that I really loved writing them as well. I wrote another thing that I loved (and finished!) called War and Peace: A Naked Look at Myself. It’s only twenty-two pages long, but it took me on a journey of loving sharing my own stories, not just stories I made up in my head. If I was going to do this, I needed to really learn how to do so tactfully and truthfully (and legally), and I was introduced to the book The Truth of Memoir by Kerry Cohen. This book was full of advice on how to write about oneself and others, and it even included snippets of personal narratives from other memoirists. One thing that stuck out to me was how transformative Cohen believed writing memoir could be: 

“The power of words is astounding. They are just words: letters grouped together to make meanings that are knitted together to make a story. Memoir is really just a story about you and ultimately about others in your life. Words have the potential to injure or incense the people who are most important to you. But they can also transform lives positively.” 

Cohen (2).

If she believed that the potential of hurting someone was worth the transformative aspect that came along with writing, then I had to believe that was something worth doing. I felt empowered and relieved when I finished my mini-memoir, but I was scared to share it with the world. I still am. But, more than that, I’m excited about finally knowing how to share my story with the world. 

Since discovering my love for writing about myself (which is a funny thing to say), I’ve written lots of pieces concerning different parts of who I am, and many of them have done well. I haven’t been the best at submitting to conferences, conventions, journals, or even contests, but I have always been the most proud of my nonfiction pieces. While abroad, I wrote a lot of travelogues, exploring what it was like exploring myself in new places, and I recently submitted a piece of that small collection to the International English Honors Society convention for 2020. I hope to hear back mid-December, and I am anxiously hoping it gets accepted. 

This love of creative nonfiction has not quelled my hunger for fictional stories, reading and writing. Fiction holds a very special place in my heart because it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I still have so many ideas—in progress and just floating in my head—of fictional worlds and characters that I can’t wait to craft. I still don’t always trust myself to follow through on my long projects; I break deadline after deadline that I give myself, and it gets so discouraging that I am less likely to even get excited about writing longer works. I need someone to give me deadlines, someone else to expect something of me, but I know that is not always what happens in the writing world. No one cares if I don’t write. It will not break any hearts—except my own. For one of my classes, I read Mentor by Tom Grimes. Tom Grimes struggled with his relationship with his mentor, especially in the beginning, but really, I thought the book was more about having someone to believe in you: “Perhaps I’d taken on too large a subject, but within a minute of half hearing Frank’s voice, I trusted his interest in my work” (11). I felt like I needed that. So, about a year ago, I started my honors thesis: a long project that requires a lot of hard work and dedication—and many people counting on me to write. I got my very own advisors (like a writing mentor?) for a long work that was near and dear to my heart. Way back from one of my first creative writing classes, the short story that was incomplete and disliked by all suddenly became this grand idea in my mind, and for God’s sake, I’m going to finish it! Now, I’m in the midst of terrible revisions, days and nights where I feel like ripping out either my hair from stress or my eyes from staring too long at a screen, but I’m working. Deadlines are still breezing by without much to show for, but I haven’t given up. I’ve learned that the only person I can rely on when it comes to writing is myself. My advisors don’t care if I finish, even though they continually show me support and give great feedback. Only I care what gets done in the end. I could quit tomorrow, and I don’t think my advisors—or the Honors College—would even blink at me; but I won’t quit because writing is what I’m meant to be doing. 

From here, from this limbo of knowing it doesn’t really matter whether I write or not, I will not give up. I have so many fun fiction ideas as well as some interesting memoir topics that I am eager to explore, just as soon as my honors thesis is complete. My biggest concern at this point is which project to start first. To keep my writing juices flowing, I also have a blog that I am not super good at keeping up with, but it brings me joy to write for it, so I see that continuing in the foreseeable future. It mostly ends up being short personal pieces and reviews, but I’ve been considering putting some flash fiction out there to see where it takes me. I’ll keep submitting to places, even though it scares the daylights out of me. I’m in control of my story, and I say I am a writer. I write for the world to see. I write about my life and the lives of people who could exist, if only I believe.

Written in 2019.