The Journey: An Autobiography of a Writer
Not many walk this road, and fewer still reach their destination, the majority turning back before the journey is through. Warning signs line the start of the trail and even the most experienced of travelers, though they remind you to follow your dreams, discourage the trip unless you are absolutely positive it's what you want to do. It takes a certain kind of person to take that chance, to try their hand at writing, and not everyone succeeds. Writing requires you to walk into the forest without a map and little direction, with only your heart, your imagination, and a stubborn will to guide you. It's an adventure, a journey, a quest.
Many people first begin to explore the area when they are young, making up stories to amuse themselves or others. Some quickly grow out of it, convinced that fiction and fairy tales are juvenile, but the rest of us stick with it, some for love of the craft, some for the challenge, and some of us just don't know anything else. When I started writing, none of these applied. Learning the basics caused me stress, less equipped than all the others, and carrying the weight of dyslexia like manacles around my ankles, making the first steps almost impossible to take. I expended extra efforts to keep up with my classmates, but writing remained a challenge for years to come. Still, I kept at it, and at age thirteen I realized that all those years dragging the chained ball behind me and strengthened my legs, strengthened my skills. I discovered that my limits could not hold me back, not when I possessed a gift and a desire for writing.
I ran into that forest, ignoring the caution signs and rushed head-first into a novel without stopping to learn the territory. Treacherous traps awaited at every turn, walls sprang up so suddenly I had no choice but to run into them, and writing proved to be dangerous indeed. I look back on those first drafts now, the footsteps behind me on this trail, and I find typos, grammar mistakes, confusion, plot twists that lead into black holes, and characters without purpose or depth, but somewhere beneath all of that, calling out to me like a siren, is a small nougat of talent, a kernel of hope. That first novel, fated to stay in the dark forest forever, provided me practice, helped me learn the way of the land. I could identify dangers sooner, learn to deal with common mishaps, and live in that world. I decided to make my home there, to become a writer like the heroes I so admired, but I knew it wouldn't be easy.
Once I promised myself this life, I knew I had to take more precautions and turn my unguided wanderings into a quest. I enrolled in classes on writing and gained a set of directions and a map, instructing me where to begin and who to speak to. I found my teachers in the forest and they handed me lists of tasks, telling me I'd receive my reward at the end. Much to my surprise, these were not payments, but talents I would develop and knowledge I would gain. I learned the many different types and styles of sentences and paragraphs, discovered ways to identify and tame them, and the creatures, elusive and unattainable before, became my tools to tackle the terrors of the forest.
The first task following these on my quest was a narrative, something I thought I knew. The beasts I befriended previously were nothing compared to this dragon, a challenge for me to overcome. Like the Red Crosse Knight, a creation of this place from long ago, I fought this dragon three times before I prevailed, though I did not share in the knight's luck with the well, and sustained many scratches and scars from my battle. My first experience on the quest might have scared another off, but not me. I continued completing the tasks given to me and learned all that I could, so that on my next encounter with a narrative, I was prepared. The second time, I succeeded, learning to use my newly acquired tools and my old talent to my advantage.
Even though I survived these following missions, I still felt clumsy in the forest, taking so many precautions that I discovered very little about myself or my craft. I realized that in order to succeed in this realm, one has to remember the chance they first took when they walked past the warning signs and into the dense thicket. Writing requires risk, so risks I began to take. I explored the darker parts of myself that I once thought I could not or should not approach and put them down on the page. I exercised my ghosts, revealed my deepest fears, and through them grew into a stronger, braver writer. Once the words escaped me, pent up inside my body for so long, I felt relieved, light. The challenges of this mythical world existed not just around me, but within me, from the place in my heart from which words poured. I had learned how to tame the words, but they were nothing without depth and purpose, so I began to create new pieces, infusing a piece of my soul into each one, letting them take on a life of their own.
Those writings became narratives unlike the dragons I had fought, but creatures that reflected the trials I had endured, mirrors to remind me where I had been. More importantly, though they revealed my hidden pain to the world, these creations proved to me that I could survive in this land, that I could use magic like my masters, conjuring and summoning the words that could create, the words I would survive by. I did not start out at a young age as an apprentice; I was not bred for this role. I became the stories I wanted to write: the innocent, unassuming child, struggling in life, who overcame the obstacles and achieved her dream. With a long road still ahead of me, and a million predicaments and beasts waiting to try and stop me, I make my way through this forest on my journey, finally calling myself a writer.
