How Is It That I Became A Writer?

The question of how I became a writer can probably be answered rather succinctly; since I can remember I've always been stashing my thoughts away in notebooks, tracing words in the air with my finger or feeling plagued by fictional characters in my head that feel as if they are furiously struggling to be free. But I guess the turning point was when, like Margaret Atwood, my work began to take on a personal significance that I wanted to share with the world.

In our first class of the year for Author Study, we were asked to consider how we became writers and also to write a timeline of important events that had happened to us. As I rifled through them, some of them including 'being diagnosed with depression' and 'getting suspended from primary/secondary school', I realised that these events had affected the way I write. When my moods were at an all time low it was mirrored in my writing and when I left school it started to become more visceral and experimental. Only I can write about these from my own point of view with authority, but they have shaped my perceptions and voice in my work. Like a carpenter shaving a block of wood, I guess I want to carve something too.

I want to leave this post with a quote by artist Banksy because if they have taught me anything, its that in writing I'll somehow always be remembered and with those words, there's a sense of comfort that I won't be forgotten.

“But maybe all art is about just trying to live on for a bit. I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”