Anyone who knows me well knows that I am extremely passionate about writing, and I happen to be pretty damn good at it.
That’s not a coincidence. I’ve been writing stories since I was in the fifth grade. Probably before then, too, but the clearest memory I have of my “first” story is from the fifth grade. I wrote a horror story about my best friends and I being trapped in school with a murderer on the loose.
It sounds pretty grimdark for a fifth grader, I know, but it honestly wasn’t as intense as it sounds.
But I’d been extremely proud of that story, to the point that I remember making a cover for the book out of construction paper and asking my mom to laminate it at her office. I was snakebit. I wrote obsessively and for fun (yes, fun!) for the next ten or so years.
In high school, the only creative writing class they offered was available to seniors. While I waited, I wrote a whole book and a bunch of other stories that will never see the light of day—but they were good practice. I worked my ass off in that creative writing class and wrote some stuff I was really proud of. I applied to college, got accepted, and pretty much immediately declared my major would be English with a concentration in writing.
And then… life happened.
First: The Burnout
My time at my first university wasn’t so bad. I didn’t completely stop writing, but I wasn’t cranking out pages and pages for fun like I used to. The real burnout started after I transferred to Columbia College Chicago in the middle of my sophomore year.
I’d completed all of my general education requirements at my first university, which meant I was focusing primarily on work for my major. And since I was majoring in their now-defunct fiction writing program, I was taking multiple writing classes a semester.
Wanna know what the page requirement was for each class?
Sixty.
So how many pages did that mean for me?
One hundred and twenty.
Per semester.
Yeah.
Advisors actively encouraged us to only take one dedicated writing class per semester, so writing one hundred and twenty pages of fiction was not the norm, but it was my reality, and it took its toll.
By the time I graduated, I wasn’t writing for anything other than class, and after I walked across the stage, I decided to take a little break.
So I did.
But the break didn’t stop.
Next: When It Rains, It Pours
Let me tell you what: it was hard to get a job with a fiction writing degree.
Not just hard; it was damn near impossible.
I really struggled. Money was and still is a huge stressor for me. I did all kinds of random work from warehouse packing to front desk services for H&R Block until I finally landed my first full-time gig with a search engine optimization company. That experience was nightmarish for me for so many reasons; maybe I’ll get into it in another article one day.
But suffice to say that I was so stressed out and anxious about work that I was crying at my desk every day. I couldn’t sleep. I literally didn’t have the brain power to read, let alone write. By this time, I’d basically completely stopped doing the one thing that made me feel truly passionate.
Slowly but surely, I got some of my creativity back. I wasn’t writing my personal fiction, but a friend had introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons, and that was a whole new way to tell stories. I was worldbuilding a lot, even writing some monologues, but I still wasn’t sitting down and really dedicating myself to anything.
And Then 2020 Happened.
I don’t know what it’s been about this hellscape of a year. Maybe it’s because I’ve been cooped up in my house so far away from my friends for months and months. Maybe it’s because J.K. Rowling coming out as a full-blown TERF has lit a fire under my ass unlike any other. Maybe it’s because all of the Black Lives Matter protests have shown me I have a lot still to learn, and in order to learn it, I need to start reading again.
Whatever it was, over the last few weeks, I’ve read a few books (GASP!!!) and written more than 13,000 words (DOUBLE GASP!!!) And honestly, I feel really good. I’m trying not to push myself and get swallowed by burnout again. I’m still working a lot, and some nights, my brain doesn’t want to cooperate, but when I manage to crank out my daily goal of two hundred words, I feel SO satisfied, no matter how hard it is to get them out.
And the best part is, I think I really have a story worth telling, and I can’t wait to share it all with you someday.