How I learned to write

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

It was a while ago when I discovered I wanted to be a writer. Someone who can paint a picture with words. I thought it would be easy. I thought my day would go like this: every morning, I would wander out of bed and shuffle over to my computer, notebook, and a half-eaten breakfast bar from the previous day. I would spend 10 minutes finding a working pen, then read over the previous day’s work and keep writing. Sure, there would be a couple setbacks – finding a better name for a character than Jaspeth because it makes me burst into laughter or figuring out how to spell “onomatopoeia” (because, seriously, how do you spell that?!) – but nothing a good night’s sleep couldn’t fix!

Then, I started writing.

I started with trying to write a book. As the saying goes, I bit off more than I could chew. It was supposed to be a chapter book, but it was too short. Unfortunately, It was too long to be called a picture book, and it did not flow as one, anyway. When I looked back and read it, I saw multiple errors in all different categories: word choice, writing mechanics, sentence fluency, and a ton of others! I wish I revised more before sending it out to my family! However, I did not and that is what is important. In the end, I decided not to change anything in my book. Instead, I decided to use it as a starting point – a bridge from my previous writing to how I write now. Always try to use your mistakes as a bridge – if you are not going to fix ’em, join ’em!