They said "Write a personal story" and I wrote a personal story, damn it.
My family likes to tell a story about me when people ask them how I got started as a writer. At the age of four, I only knew how to spell three words: “Mom” “Dad” and “love”. Despite this, every afternoon, I would trot downstairs to the basement where the computer lived, and would begin to patiently type those three words out over and over, absolutely convinced that I was telling a very poignant and thrilling story.
As I got older, I learned more words, and I began to tell more complex stories. Teachers would regularly tell my parents how imaginative I was; my parents knew all too well. One afternoon on the way back from preschool, I horrified my mother with a terrifying story about how my teacher had put me in the corner for most of the class for simply speaking up-that is, until I informed my mother that I was “just joking”.
I love telling stories. It’s a rare day when I don’t make up a story off the top of my head--rarer still that I don’t write it down. My desk is full of notes and my head is full of characters, all bubbling over and demanding to be recognized. Most of my characters come from my experiences people-watching, a fascinating sport I’m sure many people partake in but don’t really think about-making up stories for strangers on the street. “She’s tired because she’s a secret agent and couldn’t cook a meal for her family because she had to stop a bomb threat in New Mexico this morning” or, “He’s in love with a beautiful woman he just met in front of a Japanese sushi restaurant’s bathroom waiting line.”
I’m heavily influenced by the city I grew up in, Chicago, which is teeming full of interesting people. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t pass someone interesting. I ride public transportation to school every morning for an hour, and no matter how tired I am or how empty the train is, there will always be someone interesting to think up a story for and put a situation around.
Writing, for me, is not so much entertainment as necessity. I need to tell stories. I need to have people hear what I have to say, whether it is in writing or by mouth. Sometimes I feel as if my brain is too full, full of too many people clambering to talk all at once; even in my dreams I am rarely myself, throwing away the chance to have an anxiety dream about school and replacing it with myself as a young priestess chopping her way down the Amazon river. Storytelling, for me, is a method of allowing people to see the world the way I see it: a place of endless wonder, ugliness and beauty, hope and reason all at once.
Ever since I was very young, I’ve needed to write out how I felt about things. I will never pass up an opportunity to tell someone’s story if they need it to be told. After all, who am I to pick and choose amongst billions?
As I got older, I learned more words, and I began to tell more complex stories. Teachers would regularly tell my parents how imaginative I was; my parents knew all too well. One afternoon on the way back from preschool, I horrified my mother with a terrifying story about how my teacher had put me in the corner for most of the class for simply speaking up-that is, until I informed my mother that I was “just joking”.
I love telling stories. It’s a rare day when I don’t make up a story off the top of my head--rarer still that I don’t write it down. My desk is full of notes and my head is full of characters, all bubbling over and demanding to be recognized. Most of my characters come from my experiences people-watching, a fascinating sport I’m sure many people partake in but don’t really think about-making up stories for strangers on the street. “She’s tired because she’s a secret agent and couldn’t cook a meal for her family because she had to stop a bomb threat in New Mexico this morning” or, “He’s in love with a beautiful woman he just met in front of a Japanese sushi restaurant’s bathroom waiting line.”
I’m heavily influenced by the city I grew up in, Chicago, which is teeming full of interesting people. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t pass someone interesting. I ride public transportation to school every morning for an hour, and no matter how tired I am or how empty the train is, there will always be someone interesting to think up a story for and put a situation around.
Writing, for me, is not so much entertainment as necessity. I need to tell stories. I need to have people hear what I have to say, whether it is in writing or by mouth. Sometimes I feel as if my brain is too full, full of too many people clambering to talk all at once; even in my dreams I am rarely myself, throwing away the chance to have an anxiety dream about school and replacing it with myself as a young priestess chopping her way down the Amazon river. Storytelling, for me, is a method of allowing people to see the world the way I see it: a place of endless wonder, ugliness and beauty, hope and reason all at once.
Ever since I was very young, I’ve needed to write out how I felt about things. I will never pass up an opportunity to tell someone’s story if they need it to be told. After all, who am I to pick and choose amongst billions?