How a Typewriter and Carpal Tunnel Made Me a YA Author

When I was fifteen, I didn’t want to be a writer.

At least, not officially. I didn’t have the word “author” scribbled across my school notebooks or dream about signing books in a cozy indie store. Honestly, I just wanted a friend.

But life had other plans.

Halfway through that year, I got too sick to go to school. What was supposed to be a short break stretched into months. While my classmates swapped inside jokes over lunch tables, I sat homebound, learning algebra through scratchy phone calls and mailing homework in heavy envelopes.

This was before Zoom, before Google Docs—before the internet made isolation slightly less lonely. My world shrank to the walls of my bedroom and the occasional visit from a home teacher who looked like she wanted to be anywhere else.

I craved connection. And I found it in the most unexpected place: an old typewriter.

The Clack Heard Round the House

We didn’t even own a computer yet, but tucked in the garage was a dusty, blue typewriter that had belonged to someone in the family before me. It was heavy enough to double as a free weight and made a satisfying clack with every letter.

I dragged it into my room one day, fed it a sheet of paper, and started typing.

And typing.

And typing.

The sound was intoxicating. Each keystroke felt like proof that I still existed, even if no one else could see me. When I typed, I wasn’t invisible. I was a girl pounding out stories about characters who lived the lives I couldn’t. Friends who came knocking on each other’s windows. Crushes who confessed in perfectly timed monologues. Adventures that stretched far beyond the walls of my sickroom.

I typed so much, so fast, that after a few weeks my wrists ached. After a few months, they burned. By the end of the semester, a doctor diagnosed me with carpal tunnel—both arms.

Most teens came back from illness with new hobbies or inside jokes they’d missed. I came back with wrist braces and an addiction to storytelling.

Pain as a Plot Twist

Looking back, it’s almost funny. Carpal tunnel as a teenager? From writing?

But in some ways, it was the perfect foreshadowing. Because if there’s one thing chronic illness teaches you, it’s that the body has limits—but imagination doesn’t.

That typewriter forced me to pour myself into words. Into messy, raw, imperfect characters who made mistakes and still mattered. Into fictional worlds that let me say the things I couldn’t always say out loud.

Even when my hands hurt, I kept going. Because writing was the one thing that made me feel less alone.

From Typewriter to TikTok Era

Fast forward to today: I’m still writing about the messy, the moody, and the unseen. Only now, I do it with a laptop (and ergonomic keyboard, thank you very much).

And the stories I dreamed of back then—the ones about characters who aren’t shiny or perfect, who live with illness, identity struggles, and complicated families—they’ve found their way into print.

My latest is Filter: A YA Short Story About Illness, Identity, and Going Viral.

It follows Lily, a seventeen-year-old who looks perfect on TikTok—until her kidneys fail and a fainting episode at school goes viral. Suddenly she has to decide whether to keep up the act for her followers, or finally show them the messy, unfiltered reality of being sick, scared, and seventeen.

It’s short—48 pages, the length of a long coffee break—but it’s real. Emotional, funny, a little raw. Exactly the kind of story I craved at fifteen.

And it’s part of my bigger project, the Unfiltered Lives series—a collection of YA/NA short reads about characters navigating chronic illness and identity in all their complicated, imperfect humanity.

Why Short Stories Still Matter

Some people ask me: why short fiction? Why not write a big, sweeping novel?

The truth? I think the world needs both. But in a culture of scroll-fast attention spans, there’s something powerful about finishing a story in one sitting. About getting gut-punched by truth in under an hour.

I call them “coffee break stories.” They may be short, but they stay with you.

And just like that old typewriter showed me—sometimes the small, imperfect, messy things are the ones that change us most.

The Last Word

That typewriter is long gone, retired after its heroic service. My wrists still complain sometimes, especially on deadline weeks. But every time I sit down to write, I think about that fifteen-year-old version of me—lonely, aching, desperate for connection—and how stories were the bridge she built to survive.

Now I write to build those bridges for others. For teens who feel invisible. For readers craving truth without filters. For anyone who’s ever pounded on the keys—literally or metaphorically—hoping someone might hear them.

And if you’re looking for a place to start, I’d love for you to meet Lily in Filter.

Because sometimes, the bravest thing we can do isn’t to overcome—it’s to tell the truth about where we are.

✨ Filter: A YA Short Story About Illness, Identity, and Going Viral is coming available soon on Kindle. Part of the Unfiltered Lives series, where every stitch, every word, every page says: love stays.