While scrolling this weekend, I came across an interesting question, one that, while I wanted to answer, desperately needed something longer than a few words.
As people often do, and especially other writers tend to be curious, author Ranch Hand posed the question, ‘Why did you become a writer?’ Now, most people would simply say, because I wanted to try it out, or as a side hustle, or because it seemed like fun. While all those answers are true, they don’t quite encompass it entirely.
I’ve been reading before I could read. That is, I had a few favorite books that my parents read to me so many times I memorized them. I’ve never stopped. Though I can’t memorize much anymore, I still read every single night.
So how did that turn into writing? Glad you asked.
I’d always imagined stories in my head, and in fact many of them came from dreams that I could remember. I didn’t often write them down, but I was always drawn to creative outlets, so I would scribble words down sometimes, and maybe they would make sense eventually in something cohesive.
In middle school, I had a teacher that I absolutely loved, who pushed the boundaries of what ‘should’ be read in school, and took that even further with his writing class. What started there morphed into so much more. He saw something, a potential to be so much more than just writing for the academic completion of it. Writing for the sake of passing a grade wasn’t good enough. I needed to feel the story and connect to it. In fact, I actually failed a writing test in school. Was even placed in a remedial writing class to ‘fix’ whatever it was that I was struggling with. The problem was, I didn’t struggle with writing, just the topic presented. The first assignment we turned in for that class, the teacher looked at me and asked why I was in the class. The story was so good she read it out loud and told them this is what they should be striving for.
That single moment defined me in a way I wouldn’t think about for a long time.
I went on to take several more writing classes in high school, each building on a foundation laid many years prior. Art was also a love of mine, and one of my digital art assignments was to create a children’s book. I’d done similar assignments before, but this one stuck with me. The entire assignment was to end up with a completed copy of the book, which I did. I went back and shared this with that middle school teacher. His words to me then were, ‘I knew you could do it. Keep going. You’re going to do great things.’
Now, life happens, and writing had always just been a pleasure outlet for me. Something to do in my spare time and to get out the things I was feeling. I wrote poetry often, releasing things I didn’t otherwise know how to express, but real life didn’t leave much time for that. Writing took a back seat to everything, and other than a few things here and there, I didn’t write much.
After years of working in retail management and stressing myself to the point of anxiety, I started getting back into those things I used to love. The things that made me happy and let me explore myself. Art came first, but then writing shortly after. I went back and published my first book, the children’s book I’d written so long ago, and then wrote and illustrated a sequel book.
Not long after that, I started writing erotica. While I didn’t read much of it at the time, Romance had always been one of my first loves, and this was just a steamy step beyond that. I published my first erotica short in September of 2020.
My life took on meaning again. I felt like I’d come full circle and reignited something I’d long forgotten. It was like coming home after being stranded on a deserted island for what seemed like a lifetime.
That first book spawned another, and another until almost three years later, I have a back catalogue of almost 40 individual titles, countless short stories and micro fiction, and at least 14 currently planned or actively in-progress works. That’s not including the 3 others I have out under another name.
One of my favorite writers (no secret to most) is Franz Kafka. Why Kafka? Why not? Most people in the US read or are at least vaguely familiar with one of his most famous works, The Metamorphosis, but he wrote countless others in his time. He was also a deeply troubled man, suffering from bouts of extreme depression and, among other things, imposter syndrome. Yep, that’s right.
He reminds me that not every day has to be a productive one. That writing is not everything, but for a writer, it's one of the driving forces in their life. You give it your all, and one day you might get out everything you need to say, and if you don’t, then at least you tried. You don’t have to create the masterpiece, but you do have to get out what's inside. Just write, and at least you are doing what you love.
One of my favorite quotes of his, and I use it often, is this. “A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.”
I went years without writing, and I was miserable. I may not be a best seller, or make a ton of money, or have name recognition among anyone other than my close friends in the community. But to not write would be to unleash a monster I don’t want to contend with. To not write would be to drive myself to the brink of insanity. Letting that go would be the end. The last call of a mind trying to hold life together.
Writing is my outlet, my strength. I need to let the things out, one way or another. The words and stories claw at me, begging to be sculpted into a coherent string of words, be they a beautiful disaster or monstrous in their elegance.
Why did I become a writer? I didn’t. I was always a writer. I just needed to feed the monster and toss the words out into the world. To do anything else would be insanity.
