Wednesday Blog Post: How I knew I wanted to write

I was nine years old when I figured out how much I loved writing. I was in Mrs. Day's class - Mrs. Day herself was another story, of our love-hate relationship and our respect for each other, though I was too young to realize it at the time. It was the first time in school that we had a time period set aside just for us to write. It wasn't a lot of time - maybe 20 minutes or half an hour, but it was right before recess, when most of my classmates were eager to get outside.

We were given little blue books, the kind of college students dread when exam time comes around. When I saw these books, over a decade later, I still saw myself hunched over a desk in Sterling Memorial School, writing away. The only thing we had to do in that time period was write. I no longer remember if we were given prompts to write about, but I remember loving the way it felt when you write on the first page of a brand-new book, crisp and clean and waiting for your words.

The first book I wrote in was kept nice and neat. My name was written on the front in strict, practiced cursive; I always had neat handwriting. The only doodle was a tiny pumpkin that I drew there in honor of Halloween. Inside, you could watch my handwriting change, going form that uptight script to loose and flowing print as the words came to me faster and faster, the more I practiced. By the end of that school year, I would fill four or five of those little blue books - a lot of writing for a 9-year-old.

It's not like any of these stories were actually any good. I remember one about my birthday part and the awesome things that happened - none of which were actually true I wrote about how hard it was to be a pencil and how awful it was to be chewed on and sharpened constantly. I borrowed characters' names from the Baby-Sitters' Club series, which I was collecting at the time. But my first big triumph, when I realized something big about my writing, was my first "chapter story."

I was writing about a girl hanging out at recess (named, of course, Kristy, though I never really liked her in BSC. Claudia was way cooler) and one of her enemies made it look like she was flipping someone off. At the time, it was the worst offense I could imagine getting caught doing. I ended the scene with the teacher stalking over to Kristy, demanding to know what was going on.

A light bulb went off in my head: This was the place to end the chapter. Even at that age, I could feel the suspense, wondering what was going to happen to Kristy - would the teacher believe her, if she said she didn't do it? What was the punishment for flipping someone off? I remember being so excited as I turned back a couple pages in my book and, between the title and the beginning of the story, I squeezed in the words "Chapter 1." I'd never written a multi-part story before.

All of my classmates regarded this writing practice as a chore, something so boring that they wanted nothing to do with it. But this opened so many doors to me, gave me the encouragement and the time to let my Muse come out and play. At 23, I'm trying to recapture that feeling of excitement I first felt when I was 9 years old. Some kids wanted to be police officers or astronauts or lawyers when they grew up,

Me? I always wanted to be a writer.