“Follow your bliss.”
–Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth.
I hate reading. At least, I used to
hate reading. I would sit for hours puzzling over words, trying to
understand something more complicated than my young brain could manage. I
was an elementary school student with ADHD (Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder).
Consequently,
I loved writing. Before I learned to properly draw my “J”s (instead of
backwards like rounded “L”s), my nature led me to dance, run, & sing
while creating characters that were wholly real. They expressed my
hopes, fears, concerns, and occasional revenge on the bullies who teased
me, be they kids my age or unsympathetic teachers. I spent afternoons
creating songs, poems, flipbooks from Post-It decks, picture
books, plays, short stories, and by the time I reached middle school,
novels. Writing offered concrete ways of expressing the “make believe”
games I conjured alone in my living room.
Jump to present day. I've left behind my frustrations with reading to become a lover of literature, an Arts & Entertainment Editor, an
English and Creative Writing Major, a college graduate with an Honors
Thesis in young-adult literature, a producer of audiobooks, and at
heart, a writer. My dream is to become a published author some day.
While I write short stories, articles, screenplays, travel journals, and
of course, those Post-It flipbooks, my heart is in the
young-adult series that began as my Honors Thesis at Colby College. I
hope to provide kids with accessible stories that ignite their
imagination in ways that are also emotionally and psychologically true.
That is my personal goal.
The
goal of my blog is to offer a voice to those who are not always the
best students, whose eyes wander distractedly over written words, who
incite mischief, who can’t sit still long enough to organize a term
paper but pour themselves into stories, be they written, drawn, acted,
painted, or solely in your mind. We are underdogs who hope to affect the
world in positive ways, when it seems so unconquerable.
My monkey mind is what drives my journey. It doesn’t always “sit” when I
tell it to, but it fetches characters from unconscious depths and
writes stories I didn’t know I could tell.
I hope you’ll follow along with us.
