Writing is a super power.

All it takes is being able to morph 26 letters into billions of different combinations to make a perfect story. Easy? No. Art is never easy. It's hard work and often very infuriating. No matter how many hours spent at the computer second guessing whether or not my novels are good enough, I can't imagine doing anything else. I guess that having a passion means both loving whatever it is your passionate about unconditionally but at the same time also wanting to pull every single strand of hair out of your head because of it. Writing is my passion because at the time I needed it most, I became its passion. Writing never gave up on me.

Let's start at the beginning.

When I was in second grade I told my first story. I told all the other second graders with pride that I owned a horse, but that she was in North Carolina on my family's farm. I said that I rode her whenever we visited. That wasn't exactly the truth no matter how badly I wished it was. My family does have a farm in North Carolina and they have many horses but none of them are mine and I never rode one. I told the story because I wanted to fit in with my peers, to have something awesome to tell about myself in order to have friends. At the time I didn't think anybody wanted to be friends with the real me. I didn't think I was very interesting so I told stories!

My stories weren't lies. However, everyone else thought they were, and oh boy, did I pay the consequences for telling those stories. I was bullied. All the time. Eventually I stopped telling stories. Eventually I stopped talking in general just to avoid everyone's hatred. I hid from the writer in me for years--kept her caged up somewhere inside of me until sixth grade. I even stopped trying to figure out who I was and what kind of person I wanted to be because every one of my peers made me feel like I was nobody--worthless.

It was a dark place with out my stories.

All of the sudden, many years later, I began to write. Just to get away from the bullying--to find an escape. I found a safe haven in the two stories I started writing and all the wonderful books I owned. As you can tell, Matilda is my "spirit animal" (a.k.a "spirit fictional character"). I didn't write about anything in particular, mainly conversations between the people I made up since I no longer knew how to communicate with anyone because every time I tried I would get bullied for it. I wrote about the kinds of things in life I didn't have but desperately wanted: a pretty smile, a boyfriend, the ability to flirt, loyal friends, good grades, being included, and ultimately being the person who everybody is drawn to. Writing this utopia of a novel was the first time I felt happiness in a long time. However, it was also a reminder that what I wrote wasn't real but that of fiction; that I would have to wake up the next morning and endure the bullying and self-loathing all over again.

Writing changed my life.

No matter how many times my parents tried to build my self-confidence back up again, nothing would work. I guess that's why it's called "self-confidence." You have to do it for yourself. I had to learn how to love myself again. I had to find my voice and I found it by being everyone else that I wasn't. I wouldn't have been able to do this without writing stories and creating fictional characters. I became the characters I created in my novels in my real life, and when I knew I didn't like the person I was, I stopped writing about myself and my main character in that way. Throughout the many years I've been writing, I narrowed it down to a specific set of characteristics in all of my main characters in the different novels I wrote and noticed that they all started looking the same. In that moment, I knew that I had found myself.

The great thing about being a writer is that when you know who you are, you can be anybody that you want to be, even a horseback rider. You don't have to take crap from anybody. I still have my sad moments from the memories. The scars etched on my heart by the kids I grew up with--the kids whom I wanted so desperately to like me and just to be friends with--those will be there forever. I believe I'm stronger because of them.

I like to think of it this way: those who bullied me for years, you will always be the villain in my story.