A prompt from the DIY MFA Book Club:
Writing is a superpower and every superhero has an origin story. What’s yours? When did you realize that you wanted to write? What motivated you to get started?
I’m not sure that I can hone in on the exact moment where I remember thinking ‘Now I want to write’. I have just always written. It was as natural to me as breathing, and in fact it was not until much later in life that I realized other people *didn’t* write like I did.
However, the first memory I have surrounding writing, is about a story I wrote a long time ago called Cottontails Big Adventure. Why yes, I do still have the story and yes, you can read it. It has pictures!
Cottontails Big Adventure
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The thing I remember specifically about this story is that when I killed off the antagonist at the end of the story by having him fall in a lake and drown, the wonderful teacher that I had praised my originality. She told me it was very creative that my characters didn’t just end up getting along for no reason at the end of the story. (Which apparently many of my classmates had happen. I swear I don’t remember what grade I was in when I wrote this.)
That praise is the thing I remember most. It’s possible that after that is when I started writing more stories, or maybe this was just one in a line of stories I wrote that didn’t survive until today. All I know is that this story helped to define a lifetime of writing.
