When I was young, I would cycle through various possible occupations. I decided, for a week, I was going to be a ballerina. For the next two weeks I was certain I would be a fire fighter. For another month I was fighting for my right to be a world famous singer.
I remember talking to my brother. We were standing in the kitchen with my dad at a dinner party. He had asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I informed him I was going to be an artist.
"I'm going to be an artist."
"That's not an open door job."
"What's that?"
"A job with opportunities where you can go up the ranks."
"Uh... well, then I'll be a writer."
"That's not an open door job either."
I shrugged. I had taken his advice at least once, but I was going to be a writer, open doors or no open doors. Or maybe a ballerina...
While my other ambitions died quite quickly- most ballerina outfits, my dad said, were immodest, singers had to face the media, artists didn't have "open door jobs". But my writing thing just somehow, inexplicably, stuck.
I can remember my first three facets of me as a very young writer right off the bat.
I remember stapling together a few pages in the last minutes before I had to go to kindergarten. I had scribbled a somewhat random story on them and proceeded to proclaim it a book.
The second is actually more of a recollection. When I was young I would take plush animal likenesses, give them names and general personalities, and create elaborate worlds around them. These "stuffed animals" would reenact my favorites stories, falling off cliffs and breaking their legs, getting blinded by the Blacklight and selling bread made out of crumpled up cheap toilet paper. Even when I was having trouble writing words, I was telling stories. (I still remember the names and characterizations of a couple of the cats. Beatrice and Patches and... I forget her name.)
The third, and last, is a bit like both of the above. This happened in around second grade; me and my sister had had a fight. We were being asked by my no-nonsense Mum. I was slightly irritated by the way what I had said had sounded; the sentence structure was kind of weird and I had used a bad analogy. So I switched it up slightly.
"That's not what you said!"
"No, it isn't! But it sounds better that way! Like, don't those words sound nice?"
Needless to say, my mother was not amused; but it made sense to me. The words sounded better that way; the story made more sense.
Words are beautiful, often perfectly embodying their word. Some have different flavors; together, some are sad or happy, sleekly dark or clumsy but cheerful. The word "hollow" perfectly tastes of hollowness; the o's full of empty space, the ls and h thin and wane. They have prefixes and roots and odd little things they share with each other; the letters themselves are beautiful, each shaped differently, holding inside the curling lines, a sound. Together the sounds, the roots, the appearance and, most of all, the meaning of the word, become something beautiful.
A writer makes them dance. A writer makes them mean something more than a jumble of letters. Words can write a call to war, a proclamation of peace, can describe a place so beautiful your heart will long for it despite never having been in such a place. Letters, sounds, words, phrases, are my magic and I make them twirl for me.
When I somewhat coldly informed my brother I would be a writer, I was correct.
I am a writer. Even if my job is being a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, a journalist, a police officer, I am a writer at heart. Writing is what I love, and I can't imagine myself stopping writing completely.
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