In Retrospect
A contemplation on my lifelong journey of writing and reading.
I’ve started this substack on the heels of the new year, with the added loss of a platform where I found community with fellow bookish folk (RIP booktok). In such a time, I can’t help but reflect on the impact of stories throughout my life. Maybe yours was similar.
The beginning.
It feels like I’ve always had the heart of a storyteller. My mom taught me to read young, hoping to save me from her own issues with dyslexia. My dad would tell me a bedtime story each night, and I would demand that each one had to be original. Sequels were sometimes allowed. My best early memories are of such times, reading or listening as I was swept beyond the scope of my daffodil yellow bedroom.
The first time I took to writing on my own was in third grade. I was a horsegirl. I imagined being a foal lost in a rainstorm while I sat on the shower floor, using up too much hot water for my imaginings. I sat down and wrote it: a tale of a foal who had to travel across the country alone to reunite with his mother. I was so proud. My teacher at school suggested I join her summer creative writing class after that, and I happily did so.
I continued to write and read voraciously as I grew. I joined online text roleplay forums, obsessed over The Hunger Games, and read Wattpad fanfic under the covers at 1am. The library was my safe place. As a teen, I embodied an oxymoron of ‘classics snob and fanfic writer’. But rising from the depths was undiagnosed mental illness. I found it difficult to read, and my writing was only feuled by the occasional writing group. The most prominent of these was my creative writing class of senior year. I experimented with different styles, tones, and formats, attempted to convey the interiority of varying mental illnessesto my classmates. My writing had purpose. I was on a mission - the denouement was to be my final project.
Writing 50 pages of a novella for a final assignment was a feat on its own. My dedication to completing it was another. I hit a wall. Rewrote massive portions. Stared at the blinking curser while begging my brain to co-operate. I began to question myself. The subject matter was a disorder I was not personally familiar with, and, the more I studied the more I realized the book could harm more than it could help. So I set it aside.
“And so it goes…”
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
The dark period.
Despite being a lover of learning, I almost dropped out of highschool completely. I barely clawed my way through, and attribute my success to my principal allowing me to read and write an essay for a novel of my choice for credit enough to graduate. Slaughterhouse-Five was a book I clung to in the darkness that surrounded me. The only book I read and loved for awhile. I sloughed through college long enough to get my Asssociates, only temporarily rekindled by another writing class to attempt reworking my highschool novella. I couldn’t. No matter how much fleshing out and changing I did, I couldn’t write it. So I swore off writing entirely.
This period of resignation carried me into adulthood. I thought reading and writing would simply be beyond me for the rest of my life. And that attitude is ironically what saved me in the end.
June of 2023, the turning point.
I had a coworker who was an avid reader. She had picked up a new series and wanted to talk about it, but was worried about spoiling it for me. I answered that I was never going to read it, because I couldn’t read anything, so she may as well tell me. Spoilers for Gideon the Ninth only piqued my interest. The more updates I got, the more I wanted to experience it. Eventually, she let me borrow her copy. I held it captive for months as I slowly slogged through. It was difficult. I almost gave up. But it worked. I was invested, and when I finally gave her back her book I had already decided that I wanted to find another book to read.
That brought me into 2024, where I set myself a goal to read 5 books and instead read 13. I would not have been nearly as successful if I hadn’t had my ADHD diagnosis. It was life changing to sit, and read, and focus.
2024 also brought the end of the dnd campaign I ran. I had devoted so much time to “homebrew” - crafting the world, setting, plot, and enemies myself rather than using available ttrpg campaigns. When it ended suddenly, I was defeated. We hadn’t finished the story. But as I dove more into reading during this time and began finding community online, I began to realize that my creative energy didn’t have to peter out. I had renewed my love of storytelling and the time I spent writing for dnd could be spent on writing to share my stories to the world at large.
In July I started writing a story that has been with me for over a decade. In the first week of this January (and gods, it feels so long ago), I completed the first draft at 80k words. The creative spark roared into a bonfire once again.
Back to the present.
That draft brought me on it’s own incredible quest through building an entire universe. As I worldbuilt, plotted, wrote, and questioned, I thought of so many more stories that my universe could house. I have now started the first draft for the next book set in my universe, the Planes of Equipoise, that I want to publish first.
It seems that so much has happened in the brief year and a half I returned focus to stories. Most importantly, I’m finding joy again. Because no matter how hard I tried to bitterly deny it, how defeated I let myself feel when faced with what seemed insurmountable, stories are a part of me. Loving them. Living through them. Creating them. Now that I have returned to them, I’m finally myself again. I cannot be divorced from that which nourishes my soul. I know in my heart that my journey has truly only just begun, and I cannot anticipate where it will take me.
Here’s to 2025. May every book we read be one we learn from, and every word we write propel us closer to our goals.