I could tell you about how, like every other aspiring writer, "I've been writing since I could hold a pen," but I really think that sentence holds absolutely no worthwhile information at all. Haven't we all been writing since we could hold a pen? No, instead, I want to tell you that I was invested in stories far before I could hold a pen; before I could write a letter, a word, or a sentence that runs on a little too long. I have (in)finite memories of my dad reading me to sleep with fables, Beatrix Potter, and Jill Tomlinson, or making them up, telling me of princesses and dragons that did silly, mundane things. Along with pleny of 'no-eyed-deer' jokes. But writing stories probably didn't start until I was in my later years of primary school.

Primary school classes dictated a strict, beginning, middle, end policy; along with sentences enunciated with dashing descriptors, simple similes and commas, commas everywhere. Yet, I still fell in love. Writing of the brilliantly beautiful elf dashing across the land to save the last dragon egg (perhaps I was a little too influenced by Eragon, and Dragon-Keeper). I adored the way that a nuance in written language - as young as I was, my reading skills were vastly superior to my social - could so easily determine the creation of the picture in my head. I was captured, enthralled. I devoured fiction at a greater length than informative work, but everything held my attention. Nothing would stop me. At one point, nearly every book I could find in the house had been read cover to cover- excluding the ones my brother refused to ‘loan’ me (The House on Falling-Star Hill has still escaped my grasp). As a young adolescent I would read over the scrap newspapers that I had to lay out to polish my school shoes on. I would write stories about all of the fantasy creatures that inspired me; amalgamating them into one horrendously built 3 page ‘beginning’ that would inevitably be abandoned for the next ‘greatest idea yet’. I've since learned this isn't too dissimilar too Briony from Atonement- slightly to my dismay. I remember a particular submission for a short-story contest for kids that was well….on the disturbing side of horrifying; I had not long since discovered Darren Shan and oh wondrous, Stephen King. The Teddy Bear’s Picnic was not as gentle as it's name may suggest.

I think every aspiring ‘writer’ has a dark period. A place they don’t like to say is a little too comfortable to present; but a period that has ultimately aided them in their craft, and approaching themselves. As an angsty teen I explored ‘expressing my emotions’ in a positive manner, by directly presenting every possible negative attribute of myself into numerous characters of numerous notebooks that have since burned into non-existence. And it helped. It didn’t fix my problems, but it helped. I’ve veered away from fantasy, as I would get far too wound up in all the IF’s of creating a new world. But I have found I’m far better at interpreting and relaying the real world, that exists around myself, and others. I believe that fundamentally my mission as a writer in this world, is to give a voice to stories that are unbelievable to tell, that are indescribable in their pains, and tribulations, to aid people in healing and understanding. And maybe, that dark period it seems, was not so much a period, and instead an elipses...

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