Letter to a Writer
Four. What a young age. People would think you were just another little girl, sitting in her room, and playing with American Girl dolls. But you — somewhat different from other pre-schoolers – were doing something else. You built up a dream by crafting characters, writing dialogues, making covers, and finally, signing your signature. That was how you completed your first story.
Of course, you weren’t satisfied with just one. You quickly began your second project and then third, fourth, fifth…countless stories made their way to your head and you promised to write them into books. Somehow the papers on your desk were never enough to plot another world, so you would run into your parents’ room and carefully bring some more materials back into your room. Your imagination grew, and your creative collections didn’t fall behind.
After a few more years, you discovered the journey of selling your stories. You learned how to draw to make them more interesting, and the stories became comics. Your relatives were pretty supportive; they wanted to buy some from you. Your mother taught you how to print your work to make copies, and that Christmas, you asked for a color printer. You were trying your best to make your stories alive.
Everything shifted when you started to lose your youthfulness. Time was like a ginormous black hole, swallowing what was precious. Papers turned into Google Docs; pens turned into a keyboard; books turned into social media. Time was something unapproachable. You were spending so much time at school, and so much time dealing with schoolwork. Unfortunately, creating became an award for finishing your homework. You had no one to tell your stories to because nobody liked them anymore, all your peers were more into TV shows and everything online. It was almost like you were the only one stuck in the past, while you were just treasuring all the things that followed you along the lifeway.
You used to write stories about animals, friendships, and the goodness in life. However, as time pushed you forward in life, your words started to bleed. You began writing about heartbreaks and death, and sometimes you would dare to explore the darkness of human beings. You didn’t quite know what they meant…but you couldn’t stop writing about them, something about these stories made you proud. Perhaps writing about things like that could make you more mature. You wanted your stories to sound a certain way — to sound adultlike, to prove to the world that you weren’t just a child. But what was wrong with being a kid? It was a question you couldn’t answer. Your thoughts became black and white. You no longer had the eyes to see the world as if it were endlessly beautiful. What had you done incorrectly? Nothing. You were just a little girl who wanted to grow up, wishing to reach the majority and blend into the crowds. It was too painful to stand out; to be different; to be unique. Nothing was more important than to look “normal” in other people’s eyes. You imagined millions of eyes judging, watching you as you took every step. Meanwhile, everyone was actually only busy with themselves. You cared so much about others that you fell asleep crying every night, repeatedly losing faith. Every unfriendly word could become a sword, harming you until you were completely out of confidence. The trick to growing up was to ensure you were indifferent; to be blessed was to be average.
But to dream big, to remember the girl in you who smiles when she sees you writing stories with happy endings, was what you should’ve paid attention to. She loves you, she always does, no matter who you end up being in this long, endless lifetime.