Writing is the art of words: beautiful words that flow perfectly off your tongue like poetry, form a desire to read more, and almost always end with a happily ever after. It is the reality that us-the future novelists- live in and dream about. Everyone finds their true calling, some sooner than others and the trait varying from person to person. I found mine when I was six years old.

            I started out by drawing pictures, that soon wove themselves into stories of their own, and reading anything I could get my hands on. The magic of words were my true treasure, one that someday I wished to express myself, and so I began.

Everything started out with just mini-picture books, with crude grammar, plot, and fluency, yet I grew with each time my pencil touched down on paper. I soon discovered how much potential I could unlock if I only found the right story: one that I won’t know until someone else does. That was when the legacy began, and I have greedily drank up the words of other authors and spilled my own up until this point in my life. I hope to do that in the future as well.

            Someday, I want to look back on my life and say that I changed something in the literary world. I see myself now as an aspiring author, one that can make a small problem turn into an entire story, with more than one dilemma, character, and solution. At least, that is what I dream to be, but for now I am here. Wherever I am in the 21st century.

            My biggest strength, I believe, is storytelling. Not by the words specifically (I have a lot to learn in that area), but by ideas. My characters are well-rounded and 3-demensional, almost real. Though I haven’t exactly completed their stories, I know where they are and where they are going, a few weeks into development. Their lives may be in one place and then in another direction for the next moment. That is the reality in my storybook kingdom.

While I believe I can always learn more, I want to learn how to spin emotions in my tales. Yes, I can describe them, but I want to know if there is a way to make their feelings real. I understand that those traits take a lifetime to develop, but I have the devotion and the lifetime to learn. Another thing I need to educate myself on are the trade secrets. I always feel as if published authors know something that I don’t know that floods their story with new.

            You want to know the best part of writing? The best part is creating an alternate reality where you control what happens, who falls in love, who receives the happily ever after, and who pays for what awful things they do. For a teen, it is something most of us have no control over. It almost some taste of a better world, one that will almost never exist.

Writing is not just writing: it is a lifestyle. It is something you breathe every day that is a part of you. Once you have begun the transformation, there is no stopping it. You have a different outlook on reality, that only other writers can see. That is the true magic.