For most of my life, writing has been the most important thing in the world to me. When I wrote my first story (a picture book titled The Adventures of Grandma Rara and Hearti), I knew it was the rest of my life. I wrote stories with my best friends through elementary school. I did my best to write my first novels, though they were mostly sorry replicas of my favorite book series. Honestly, I must’ve written at least four copies of Percy Jackson by the time I was twelve.
I wrote my first novel at 11, most of it while on a road trip with my family. While we stopped at Mount Rushmore, I brought along a cracked iPad Mini so I could keep working on it. It was a dystopian young-adult titled Dynamite. I sent my first query letters that December, got my first rejections in May.
At the beginning, I didn’t love writing because I loved stories. I liked the goals I could set for myself, the deadlines. No thrill has ever compared to writing my first 90,000 word book. I’ve never moved on from final succeeding at NaNoWriMo. It’s a special sort of thing, to know you’re working on something no one else is. There’s nothing like being the kid who’s succeeding, at least not for me.
Matter of fact, even when I’d grown up a little bit, I still wasn’t writing because I loved it. I was writing to stay afloat. In middle school, I struggled deeply with my mental health. One of my friends often told me that I couldn’t give up until I’d been published, and, somehow, that’s what worked. I could pump out novels like no one else, I had an understanding of the publishing world better than any 13 year old alive. I’d bet money on that.
Writing completely stopped being about passion, for me. At that point in time, everything was formulaic. Watch the trends. Keep a careful word count. Don’t miss a single days word goal. 2,000, daily, no matter what. The industry doesn’t care what’s happening in your life; it doesn’t care that a girl was mean to you in Algebra. Toughen up and hit the word count.
I never got published like that. Believe it or not, no matter how well you think you understand the industry, no matter what you research, you can’t really understand it. The winds shift daily, and something that wouldn’t have gotten a lick of attention the day before could be a bestseller the next.
It was around the same time I reached that conclusion that I stopped feeling like I was actually good at writing. Writing is the sort of thing that takes a lot out of you. There’s no such thing as a ‘good’ writer, which can either be a great thing or a bad thing. One of the most popular books of the decade didn’t use dialogue tags. A book that does all the right things, followed every trend, had everything going for it, could flop. You can’t be good at writing. You can’t be bad.
I hated that. I hated that a book that follows none of the rules could get the attention — it hadn’t done the right thing. Hadn’t met expectations. I was surrounded, at this point in time, by the most talented writers I’d ever met. They hadn’t done the work I had. Never had really worked towards a word count goal. Never queried a literary agent. Some of them didn’t even know what querying was.
And they were undeniably better than me. Much better, in fact.
What I’m saying is that I had no choice but to involved. Shift focus. Abandon my careful planners and all the trackers I’d built. Forget about the idea that I could be the best by following the arbitrary rules I’d spent six years following.
Four months later, I had my first major publication. I’d done it. The goal I’d chased, the reason I was alive, was over. That really left me floundering — what was I supposed to do? I’d done it. At that point, I was allowed to quit. Allowed to give up.
Writing stopped feeling meaningful. Everything stopped feeling meaningful. I had no idea what to do with myself. For the first time, I really had to think about what I liked about writing. I still get tripped up about it, if I’m honest.
Writing got me through the worst part of my life. Because of that, it still feels like the worst part of my life. It’s hard to work on novels without reaching for those goals. Hard to write a short story without worrying about whether it fits the trends. Some part of me is still waiting for writing to save me, waiting for the moment when it all works out. Gold medal. Bestseller. Accomplished.
I got the gold medal. The next day, I was still the same person. I have almost everything I have ever wanted. All of the misery, everything I felt I was doing to reach the moment of success, it led up to this. Right now. And none of those publications, awards, compliments, any of it, changed anything.
But I changed nonetheless, not because of the fact that I was winning or even that I was writing, but because I was living. That’s what writing has given me, at the end of the day. The motivation to keep on li
