Looking Back

About a year ago, my brother Josh asked me where the idea for my story came from. Like many of my conversations with Josh, I remember perfectly where we were. We were driving down to Ocean City for Easter and my mom was passed out, as she always is during a car ride. It was late, maybe around midnight, and his car still wouldn't warm up from my sitting there because of the leather seats.

But as he asked me that question, I fell silent and looked out the window, watching the street lamps flash pass like lightning bugs. It took me a few moments to gather my thoughts, and eventually I said, "I think I wanted wings."

He laughed.

For the remaining hour of the trip I tried to explain myself. I remember, vaguely, that sometime during middle school I began to concoct this idea of being a superhero. What was that like? Then I thought about what I would want as a super power. Everyone wants to do something extraordinary, I think. Even though fancy mind powers would be awesome, I always wanted to fly. See, I was that kid that whenever a gust of wind would hit me, I would begin to pretend like I was soaring away with it.

Let me surge through the clouds, race an eagle, feel the spray of the ocean as I glide across it. These were (and still are), things I yearn for in a way that can't ever be fulfilled. At least not while on Earth. Our human bodies have far too many frailties as it is. Having wings would only complicate things.

But regardless, I wanted them. I knew I wanted them. End of story. Period.

Then as I talked more about where my ideas stemmed from, I realized I drew a lot of inspiration off of my old Saturday morning cartoons. Pokemon and Digimon chiefly among them. Kids going off having adventures? Yes please! Digimon especially. Because Pokemon was pretty much self-explanatory. Kid wants to train monsters to fight and be awesome. 'K. Got it.

Digimon however held a deeper story. The kids had to save the world. Kids had to save the world. That idea fascinated me. I wanted to do that. I wanted to be a vital role in the occurance of something legendary. I wanted to be part of an epic story people told and retold a million times over. But I was a kid from the suburbs of Philly. The worst that ever happened was occasionally people tried to jump off the bridge across my street and only broke their legs 'cause it wasn't tall enough.

I delved into stories of grandeur. Of sweeping landscapes and rich storytelling. I wanted to be there, and my imagination would let me. So I built on story after story. If I had known about fanfiction back then, I probably would have written up a storm just to get my own spin on something out of my head. But I didn't, so I didn't start writing till middle school.

I remember that my first attempt at writing a book was awful. Absolutely pitiful. I was fourteen, but it was just...no. There's nothing about it except that it was atrocious. At the time, I wanted to tell a story. I had these images in my head that didn't make much sense. I had a few random characters that, back then, were cardboard. And if I just took everything I ever thought was cool from stories or TV shows or movies into it, then it would be awesome.

And it was. For about fifteen seconds. Then I hated it.

But it was a start. I think, whether I realized it or not, I opened my mind to something that unleashed floodgates in my imagination. The fact that I could, if I wanted, write a story that I would love to read. I knew I would love it. And the older I got, the more I doodled. I thought if I could just become good at drawing, maybe then I could draw what I saw in my head.

The problem was, I wasn't getting good at drawing. I was becoming mediocre at it at best. I couldn't draw people, and they were vital to the scenes I saw in my brain. So that meant the whole drawing excuse was out the door. I couldn't write and I couldn't draw. That left movies. Maybe I could get someone to listen to me and I could then get my idea turned into a movie.

Well that was just foolishness.

So out the window that horrible idea went. I threw everything I had even remotely come up with regarding the story I had into a folder on my computer and I pretended like it wasn't there. I actually used to pretend like I wasn't trying to write a story. I acted as though if I didn't write in my journal about it or didn't talk to anyone about it, then it wasn't happening. And since I couldn't, at the time, get any of my family members to read it, I assumed it was crap and got it in my head that only smart, old people wrote books.

I met neither of those qualifications, so I pretended to not want to write books, meanwhile I had this idea growing in my head. The older I got, the more the story progressed. I knew, even when I was young, that it was going to be a series. I just used to think it was a lot dumber back then. Really, it was absurdity wrapped into stupidity flambeed over ignorance.

I doodled more, hoping that something might come to me. Around eleventh grade I began to mold the story more, trying to make sense of it. I knew I wanted to be important. I wanted to be special. And seeing as I was an ordinary, boring teacher's pet of a student, I knew that was never going to happen. So I made up a story in which I could be whatever I wanted.

At the time I just named the character something silly and pretended I was that person. The stories never got off page two, but I was trying. At least I was coming up with something slightly better. Slightly better than what I had come up with when I was in middle school. Somehow though, my middle school attempt reaching forty pages was looking a whole lot better, simply because it had gotten farther. But each time I tried to reread it, I was bored the whole time.

I knew that if I didn't like the story and couldn't get into it, then there wasn't a purpose.

Then God's grace landed me in a Creative Writing class that changed everything. I wrote a twenty page kick start to my first book. It was awful and whenever I go back and reread it, I realize it was my life, but how I thought it should have been. It wasn't until much later that I realized that no matter how much I wanted to live this life, it wasn't mine. I was writing someone else's adventure, and she wasn't me. She's my alter ego instead, everything I wish I could be and am glad I'm not at the same time.

Now, through all that crap, we land on the morning when I start writing the fifth book.

Funny how God changes our plans, huh?

Currently Editing: Alaster

Currently Writing: Revelation

Currently Reading: Eldest by Christopher Paolini

Currently Listening to: "Homecoming" by Thomas Bergersen