Prompt: Write about your first memories as a writer. Was there a particular moment you remember when you knew you could write? Or that you wanted to be a writer?
The first memory I have of wanting to be a writer was when I was about 10 years old and decided I wanted to write a novel. Being the sheltered, homeschooled Christian child that I was, I of course settled on a crime noir featuring a chain-smoking, day-drinking detective whose crime-fighting laboratory needed no scientific explanation—it just worked. I think I got about 12 pages in, albeit 12 pages of large handwriting that was most likely double spaced. I have only the faintest memory of plot, to the extent that it even existed—one detail that stands out in my memory is the protagonist's connection to his dog, likely related to my family's recent adoption of one.
Though I know I wrote quite a bit before this, being an early bloomer in literacy, there are a few reasons this might stand out. First is that I don't recall taking on any major creative writing projects on my own initiative before this. I certainly wrote for school, though my style back then was cringe-inducing, loaded to the brim with words I barely understood, taken from vocab lists I'd been given in class.
I haven't ever become much of a consistent writer, preferring to operate in fits of inspiration that die out and let half-finished first drafts be buried in the avalanche of Google Docs. This first experience, which illustrates a similar level of dedication, was nevertheless formative. In a similar way that the process of learning to talk unlocks the capacity to communicate about the actual world, it seems to me that the process of writing fiction unlocked my capacity for self-motivated creativity.
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