Where Do I Begin?

Writing has always been an escape for me. First, it was an escape from the torment from others then it became an escape from the torment in my mind. You see, if you were to crack open my head and peer in, you would see a jumble of ideas, stories, thoughts, lyrics, hopes, dreams, etc. I feel like it would cause even the smartest out of our species to go insane. How have I lived with all of this inside of my head? As my title says, I have no idea where to begin with my history with writing, but I guess I could try and sort it out.

I guess my love for writing stems from my love of reading. Of course, I don't read as much as I use to, but, when I do, I am your stereotypical bookworm that will constantly have her nose in a book. At first, I only knew how to write little short stories that were only a few pages long. I didn't know how to describe the colorful pictures that would play in my head on an endless loop, as if I were watching a movie that no one else could see. As I got older, I learned more and more on how to describe how I was thinking, feeling, and, more importantly, I learned how to write the stories that seem to constantly be forming in my head. When everything else that I held dear to my heart was taken from me, I turned to my writing as comfort, but even that was discouraged by others.

When I was a sophomore in high school, my English teacher gave us the assignment of writing a short story that was to be 10 to 15 pages long, which was probably the only assignment that would ever make me cry happy tears. I was so excited about being able to write that I started instantly. By the time the first draft was due, I had already hand written about 12 pages of content, but I wasn't anywhere near completing the assignment. During class the next day, the teacher took me aside and told me that I needed to shorten my story because she didn't have the time or want to read my story because it was far too long, it wasn't, as she said, "her cup of tea," and no one was ever going to find it interesting enough to read. Obviously, it was fine if she didn't find it interesting, but, to discourage a young child that had a passion for it, is one of the cruelest things a teacher or an adult could ever do to anyone.

After that day, I stopped writing for years to come. Of course, I would turn in the essays and papers that I had to write for school, but I wouldn't freely write, unless I needed to vent and no one to vent out loud to. Now, the way that I got back into writing is quite silly and a little strange, but I am okay with it because I have found my way back to one of my passions. You see, I had been watching this TV show on Netflix called Jane the Virgin. In this show, the main character is a writer and, after watching her go after her dream, I realized that I wanted to go after my dreams too, and one of them was to be a writer. So, I sat down in front of a computer and started writing. Happily, I already had an almost fully developed story that I had been creating in my mind and the only left to do was to write it all down, which I have been doing.

With writing, there is always the potential of writer's block, which I can get quite often. I can't count the amount of times that I have gone back and read my story just so I could figure out what to do or how to write the next part. Sometimes, when I don't know how to continue the story, it's because I have another idea of a story pop up in my head, so in order to undo the writer's block, I have to write down what has popped in my head.

I have written about writing being an escape for me, but it is also an outlet for my imagination. Even to this day, my imagination doesn't seem to have any bounds because I am constantly creating something crazy in my mind. I have a mind that never seems to want to rest, which means that, even when I am trying to sleep, I am creating something new and crazy. I don't do it on purpose, but there are times when I just can't help but imagine how things are going to be or what they would be like if we were all in a different kind of world or universe. What is writing to you? An escape, an outlet, or something else?