I was the type of kid who’s biggest offense was staying up too late to read or becoming so engulfed in a book that I didn’t pay attention to anything else around me. From a young age, I found comfort in books. In the fictional worlds they created and the characters who, through the unfolding of a story, felt like best friends.
Looking back on my life, there was never a moment when reading or writing wasn’t a core part of it. From the stories I was read every night to the pieces of construction paper where my dad would scribe my the stories that poured from my three-year-old mouth, my childhood was filled with literature.
This love for stories carried through my elementary and middle school years. I read novel after novel, wishing that one day I, too, could write my own story. But, I was a young girl from a small town in Western Massachusetts. I didn’t think there was any chance I could write a novel as my favorite authors did.
As my late middle school and early high school years came around, I was writing all of the time. An idea would spark in my mind, and I couldn’t help but stop what I was doing and simply write about it. I would quickly move from storyline to storyline, never finishing one complete idea. Although I was writing so much, I felt too scared to share it with anyone. Most of the people around me, at school especially, had no idea I even liked to write. I was so shy and feared people would think my passion for writing was weird or stupid. So, I hid my passion and didn’t believe I could make something out of writing.
It wasn’t until 2020, my sophomore year of high school, that I finally decided to take the leap and further my dreams.
Like most people, when my school shut down in 2020 due to the pandemic, I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t see my friends, partake in my typical hobbies, or go to school anymore. Any semblance of normal life had vanished, and it seemed as if the world was becoming more and more chaotic by the day. Filled with stress, I turned to writing as a way to pass the time.
Upon finding an old document from a year prior, I began to pick up where I left off on a murder mystery novel. With nothing but a list of names and a vague plot line, I didn’t focus on the big idea of writing an entire book, but just took it page by page. I realized that the more I wrote, the less stress I felt. This story became my lifeline during the pandemic by not only providing a reprieve from the chaos, but pushing me to pursue a dream that had been in my heart for years.
Although I hadn’t initially set out for that random document to become a novel, in June of 2020 I had finished an entire 375 page draft. I was so proud of myself, but thought that was as far as my writing would go. That is until my mom read it and fell so in love that she told me we had to try to get it published. Despite my fears, I used her encouragement to fuel me, and in December of 2020, I became a self-published author.
About three and a half years later, I have gone on to publish two more mystery novels, spoken at fifteen schools about confidence and my writing process, held book signings, and even signed with a literary agent. Writing is an essential part of my life, and everyday I’m so grateful to be able to pursue my passion.
