Writing and terror.  These two unrelated topics coincided in my brain for the first fifteen years of my life.  The thought of putting a pencil to paper to compose a manuscript used to fill me with terror.  The mere insinuation that I would not have enough to say or couldn’t say what I yearned to say was enough to keep me far away from those yellow wooden writing instruments unless I absolutely had to for school.  I also didn’t know where to start.  I swore I would never love writing.  But my Waterloo was creeping steadily closer, ever lurking behind the scenes of my childhood years, though it was unperceivable then.

From an early age, I was allergic to writing.  That allergy was the result of my fear of putting words on a page.  I remember my struggle to get through my phonics book when I was seven.  It was not the reading part I had trouble with—I loved that; it was the writing.  When an assignment of my phonics book was to write my own story, I moaned and groaned over the task, afraid to begin.  I simply could not force a waterfall of words past the inexplicable block in my mind onto the page.  It was an exhausting task, one I felt was out of the question.  Besides, there were so many other things to do than drag a pencil across a page.  I wanted to play, to sing, to draw, and to read.  These were my excuses for not writing.

As I approached adolescence, my writing continued to languish: I still dreaded it.  I insisted that writing was ‘too hard.’  The words would still not come because I was baffled on how to get started, even though I was reading prolifically.  Finally, I asked my dad what “those red, blue, and green books” were about on his shelf.

“They’re called The Lord of the Rings,” he told me.  “They’re the story of a hobbit who saves his world from the evil Sauron.”

“Can I read them?” I asked.  They sounded interesting.

Dad gave me the blue book, the first, entitled The Fellowship of the Ring.  As I read it on my bed, however, I realized it was more arduous than the whimsical picture on the cover had made it seem.  The sentences were complex, and the vocabulary J. R. R. Tolkien used sent my brain spinning in confusion.  Still, I plowed through The Fellowship, The Two Towers, and finally ended my journey in The Return of the King, just as exhausted as Frodo was on the slopes of Mount Doom.  Wanting to learn more about the Shire, I read The Hobbit.  But it wasn’t until I saw Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies that the series really grabbed hold of me.  I reread snippets of the story, marveling at their vivid portrayal in the book and how the movie brought them to life even more.  I imagined I was with Frodo and his companions, desperately trying to defeat Sauron and his armies before Minas Tirith fell.  My backyard became my Middle Earth, and within my imagination, anything was possible.  I cherished the series so much, I wrote new scenes in my head, acting them out in the yard, or merely living my versions of the story as I sat on the couch.  I might have been staring out the window during breaktime, but in my mind’s eye, I wasn’t: I was frozen in place in front of the Balrog, standing on The Bridge of Khazad-dûm.  By the time I reached adolescence, I had multiple ongoing versions of the story inside my head, filling my thoughts.

My creative thoughts ran wild: anything or anywhere could be the setting for a thrilling story, one only I could see.  I lived my stories—breathed them, continuing to act them out.  They became intertwined with my being as the years passed.  I kept on reading, hungry to extend the schemes of my ‘imagination stories.’  My happy place was having my nose buried deep inside my books.

To my chagrin, as I grew older, I no longer had large chunks of time to lose myself inside a book and I had more school-work to complete.  Unable to sacrifice books, I snatched bits of reading around my other tasks.  I’d read up until bedtime, and then sneak a light under my covers, desperate to discover what happened next to Nancy Drew or Artemis Fowl.  One night, engrossed in a book, I disappeared underneath my covers with my light to continue reading, and when I emerged, tired but triumphant at having finished the book, the red fluorescent numbers of my clock read 2:30: I’d read for over five hours!

Even though I loved—adored—to read, I still loathed writing.  When I look back now, I find this ironic considering the thirst for literature inside me.  That fear and hostility of writing was a thick wall between me and a pen.  But the day was coming when I’d change my mind.  When my sister, mentioned that she was writing down some stories, I inwardly rolled my eyes.  How is she writing? I asked myself.  Later, still skeptical, I asked her what she was writing.  “I make stories up in my head,” she replied, unconscious of the effect her words had on me.  I blinked, shocked by her statement because that was me.  “I don’t want to forget them so I’m writing them down,” she continued.  “Oh,” I managed to reply.  I couldn’t finish my sentence aloud, for to admit that I did the same would be to attack that previously mentioned wall.   

I noticed that my sister was almost never without her blue pen and notebook in the weeks that followed.  Writing was almost all she did in her spare time.  But it was not until months later that I realized how useful it would be to follow suit.  I had to admit, writing down my stories sounded like a good idea: I didn’t want to forget my own stories.  Maybe I should try, I thought.  My Waterloo was upon me.  That wall was slowly beginning to shake, and one cold, dreary Saturday afternoon in February, it began to crack when, almost furtively, self-consciously, I opened a lined notebook, put my black, felt-tipped pen to the page, and began.

I wrote slowly at first, then my hand flew across the page leaving cramped sentences in its wake, and the wall inside me cracked some more.  As it continued to crack, I out poured the fantastical story about a girl named Virginia born with magical powers into the depths of my notebook, the scrawl of my handwriting sprawling across the pages.  I’d cherished this tale for years; I had almost too many ideas—I couldn’t write fast enough.  So lost was I in the flow of my writing that I jumped when my mom called me, wondering what I was doing.

“Um, writing,” I forced nonchalance into my voice.

The wall cracked more quickly, dust sifting off the sides.

“Ok, sounds good, dinner’s in about half an hour.  At 6,” she called back, her footsteps tapping away into the kitchen.

Then I realized what she’d said: “Dinner’s in about half an hour.”  I’ve been up here since 2.  Three and a half hours!?!?

And you thought you hated writing, a smug voice inside me said.

At that, the wall crumble into dust, and I fell in love with writing.

I returned to my story every spare moment I had, writing over 100 pages, and still, to this day, it’s not finished.  I poured over it, exploring Virginia’s struggle for acceptance, constantly editing it.  One day she was walking through a forest on her journey to restore peace to her country.  The next, Virginia hadn’t gone through that forest at all: I’d crossed the part out because it had no link to the part when she found her best friend after years of separation.  Sometimes I’d smile at awkward, repetitive sentences, laughing and groaning at the same time at my misuse of semi-colons and colons.  This is great, I’d think to myself.  Other times, I’d moan to myself, what was I thinking?  I’m not a writer.  I should burn this in the backyard.  Virginia didn’t want me to stop telling her story, though, and I soon began a second one, then a third.  As before, books and movies inspired me to add on to my stories, and I filled the pages of my notebooks.

My writing unshackles the stories inside me.  When I write, I flesh them out, constantly adding to them to fill them with vivid imagery.  Reading was the battering ram that brought down the wall.  Thanks to reading, I don’t dislike writing.  Now my stories are personal stories, my own.  They are as much a part of me as much as the hand that holds the letter-forming pen is a part of my body.