"I spent a lot of time trying to imagine a life that was better than the one I had."
According to Facebook, I have lived a seemingly perfect life. Scrolling down you'll find images of your typical middle class girl. Starting in 2009, the beginning of a promising era, I have photos of my perfect friends enjoying our wonderful lives. I had good grades, participated in after school activities, and found myself in honor classes. In 2012 I graduated as expected with my high-school diploma ready to take on the world. Now I have a husband, a baby, and a house living the great American Dream. Recently, I released my first book and today we celebrate the pending release of the novel.
This very black and white blurb starts after I knew I would become a writer. And like all ink, it looks good on paper until you get it wet and the lines bleed together.
My life is not perfect.
My life has never been perfect.
But life goes on
Because it has to.
In reality I picked up writing because I was trying to imagine a life that was better than the life I had. Now don't get me wrong, I have lived a fantastic life, but it has never been easy and most definitely has been hard.
When I was around four my parents split up and my dad began his own journey as a single father. I was given (within reason) all the things I wanted. But I felt that there was something missing in my life because I didn't have the mom that everyone else had. Disney movies were a big thing for me and the characters often sung about their problems. Since naturally everyone sings about their problems I began to write songs. I spent most of my grade school and middle school life believing I was going to be a singer at night and lawyer by day.
My dad remarried a wonderful women who would fill that void or so I thought. This women stayed in our lives through out my middle school years and reclaimed the title of mom. I loved her very much but was unable to please her. I lived a similar life to Cinderella with a wicked step mother but an amazing step sister.
But I was a dreamer and couldn't focus on the variety of chores I had been given. I spent my time imagining far off lands, spectacular villains, and secret heroes. These characters became more of an obsession that offered no ticket for escape. I would never be a hero or go to far off worlds. I could not save my new family from it's self destruction.
So to rid my mind of my characters I wrote them down so that I wouldn't have to think about them anymore. And suddenly as if over night the writer in me found the light.
My songs became stories and then eighth grade came to a closing.
I became a tragic hero.
I revealed my step mothers true nature.
Became a character witness in trial for my sister's custody
and lost the family I had always hoped to have.
Not only did I stop writing songs but I had stopped singing all together. My craving for Harvard and law school dissipated after a real life trial and I didn't know who I wanted to be anymore.
But 2009 brought promise. I was a freshmen in high-school and had found myself in Honors English. My characters had grown so much in my head. I was writing and stopping stories at a rapid rate. I was going to be a writer. Nothing was going to stop me. Not only was I going to be a writer, I was going to do it by the time I was twenty-two.
In 2012 I wrote a short story called "Blue Birds" for a contest. Up until that point my love for writing lived within the fantasy world but for this contest I went the science fiction route. Without any real edits I sent my story to the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contest. A contest that thousands of authors enter each quarter. But I received only an honorable mention. After some research I found that the honorable mention put me in the top fifty but you needed to be top ten to win. So the story died until I met my editor.
Now that story is pending release as "Seeking Incandescence" and I am twenty-two.
But these are not the characters of my eighth grade years.
Heroes come in many forms.
Heroes are hope.
Heroes are passion.
Heroes are tragic.
And these heroes are found in "Seeking Incandescence."
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