sábado, 27 de junio de 2020

What made you want to write your first story?

I have always loved reading, I have been reading since I can remember, and before I was able to read, I was read to by my mom or grandma. Also, as a toddler and little child, I loved it when my family would tell me stories, but I loved it even more when they would invent those stories on the spot. There is something about story creation that has always entrhalled me. 
When I was able to write, around the age of 6, I remember writing as much as I could, and asking my mom to give me assignments extra from the ones I got at school, because I loved writing. Writing has always been a game for me. The first story I rememebr writing was written by a 7-year-old me for school. They made us all write a story and they published a little book with stories from kids from K4 to the last year in secondary school - I still have it. My story is adorable, and basically a four line rip-off of The Little Mermaid and Cinderella. Look at me, writing traditional fairy tale retellings from such an early age :P

I continued to write stories as a child, mainly for school, and sometimes as a game with my best-friend, we had a couple of ongoing stories and we would add to them and then perform them. It was a lot of fun. But my first "serious" work came when I was 13. We were studying how they had brought African people to America as slaves and I felt horrified at the violence of it, and right while the teacher was explaining, I started imagining a story (or a story started to appear to me, which would be more accurate) that I wanted to read. But as I didn't know of any books that were like this, I decided to write it myself. So I outlined my first novel and wrote a few scenes. I was so proud!

Writing has always been a part of my life. Always. It is as much a part of me as breathing. I just couldn't imagine my life without writing.