I can’t avoid the cliché. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I suppose it comes from a very early habit of daydreaming and overexposure to Disneyworld. My father worked as a scenic artist for the park most of my childhood and would bring home discarded props from rides and murals of seascapes that would sit in our garage. Doing laundry was almost like stepping into a fantasy. I was one of few kids who had a life-sized resin mermaid greet me at the door. I was the child who always got lost, distracted, fascinated by shiny things. I was the child who spent the afternoons in the woods behind our house making it my own Terabithia. I hoarded library books and got excited about our school’s Scholastic book fairs, rushing the displays for Judy Blume or Willo Davis Roberts. I was hooked on the fantastic. I wanted nothing more than to think up stories like my favorite authors and write them down.
In fourth grade, I wrote my first short story about a boy who takes a girl on an adventure through network television where each show is its own reality. I called it “Channel 7”. My first editing experience came from a book of poetry assigned in fifth grade. My teacher changed one of my lines before the books were sent to be printed. I was devastated, but learned my lesson early: publication often means artistic sacrifice. I was usually the showcase student, my essays and stories in the glass cases of the elementary school lobby. My fellow students bribed me with candy bars and decorative erasers, begging me to write their themes and book reports. I was a shy, skinny limp-haired girl who spent most of her time in her head, dreaming up more stories and clamoring through the dictionary for new cool words to use that no one else knew. Writing was my one thing. I couldn’t cross the monkey bars or win at four-square, but I could write.
In middle school, I became obsessed with Edgar Allen Poe. One particular collection of his stories and poems was a staple in my book bag, the card in the back filled up with my name because I checked it out from the media center every week. His style thrilled me, the bleak, gothic and often ironic tone eventually having its effect on my own poetry. I attempted to copy him, writing my own solemn lines during class until a teacher caught me and snatched one of my poems. This sparked a visit to the guidance counselor where I was asked how things were at home. I knew I had been successful. I loved the mystery and economy of Poe’s stories, the way he always edged the supernatural. The language was haunting and fluid, and I was smitten by words like phantasmagoric and gossamer.
It wasn’t long before the elements of genre fiction made their way into my writing. I thrived on the sweeping sci-fi and fantasy plots of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Tolkien, Bradbury, H.G. Wells, and James Thurber. My first year of college was a humbling experience, closed in on all sides by excellent writers in my intro classes whose seasoned styles were evident in the first workshop. I entered campus writing contests in hopes of a simple honorable mention. My fiction proved to be sufficient enough to earn two second-place awards in two separate contests, and despite consistent rejection from the literary magazine, my confidence was high. My style, written in a mostly adolescent, diary-entry tone with snarky characters and sharp dialogue, was steadily improving. Myself and many of my classmates were still in what I would come to know as the “wish-fulfillment” stage, where the beginning writer focuses not on the complexities of the human condition but rather the ideal and escapist notion that one should write a story he or she would most like to read.
This is where I fell into the romance genre. My stories from very early on had the markings of romance. Even those written for the contests involved a boy/girl interaction and romantic undertone. I had read the bodice-rippers from time to time and often imagined more lively plots or characters for each once I was finished with them. I would give the female lead more gusto or the setting more flare and eventually came up with my own idea for what I thought would be an easy market to penetrate. I set my first romance novel in the Victorian era where I could play with the language I so loved and escape into a world I was fascinated by. I created characters I could relate to that subverted the stereotypes of the Harlequins and interacted with humor and intelligence rather than perpetually swooning. Someone published it.
Even armed with this new credit, I still felt inferior in the workshops. I envied those students who had mastered the short story with literary prose and complex characters. Though I was devoted to my own lengthy escapist fiction, I longed to write something worthy of my peers and instructors. My short stories were ‘fun’, typically about teenagers and resembled the plot lines of John Hughes movies, worthy only of the fiction section of Seventeen. When it came time to apply to graduate school, I knew I had to come up with something completely new. It was time to put away my “wish-fulfillment” writing, to dive into real life and explore the complexities of human nature. It was time to evolve, to create characters I pitied rather than envied. No more romance, no more happy endings. It was time to be literary.
My writing life became the beautiful struggle to create fine art rather than to please the market with entertainment fiction. I found I could master poetic description but my conflicts were usually formulaic. When I tried to make them otherwise, they became non-existent. And so my own style came to me, gradually at first and honed by the remarks of my classmates. The workshop voices still echo when I write, urging me to be braver, more real. Finally, my stories took on a different shape. My idealistic characters rebelled against me, wanting the flaws of human nature and the conflicts that showcased them. But, the ever-haunting allure of the fantastic wouldn’t be silenced even when it was completely unnecessary for the story. Finally, my own hybrid was born. I found myself using the supernatural to place characters in pivotal moments. The mystical became a quiet, benevolent hand that sneaks in, does its work and vanishes again.
And so I’ve arrived in the middle of both passions: to dive deep into the realm of human complexities and create characters that ring true while also paying tribute to the fantasy and magic that has captured me all my life. My work as a writer finally encompasses all that drives me rather than only what I feel obligated to write. I can now merge the literary with the fantastic, write ‘fun’ stories that also show a character’s deepest failings and trace my personal style and creative process back to grade school. My first creative writing teacher told me that writing style takes years to develop. I thought he was crazy and that I already had a polished approach at nineteen years old. Many years and nearly three diplomas later, at last, I saw what he meant. Over time, I had copied other authors, written for entertainment, written to please the literary community and constructed my creative life from each experience. If I’ve learned anything from this burden that is the drive to write, it’s that a good writer will always be in the process of creative evolution.