my keyboard is my wand

Posted by Raven M on 6:46 AM in inspiration, thoughts, writing,

I have dreamed of sharing my stories with the world ever since I was a little girl.

I used to write stories about counterfeit pennies and evil meatballs and give them to my family members.

The meatball story was pretty cool because my mom helped me make a book cover using a spaghetti box.

Looking back I can't begin to tell you how much I loved writing stories and drawing pictures to go with them.

Writing is just so magical and I'm sure if you're a writer you don't need me to tell you that.

But I've been writing ever since I was five, wrote my first novel, which I keep hidden in a file that will never again see light, when I was nine.

It was about what most girls who dreamed of faraway lands and wore way too much pink would write about.

There were fairies and witches and demons and knights in shining armor. I even made up back stories for all of my characters and their homelands.

I drew pictures on my computer, pictures that are sadly long gone but I still remember them - I never forget any of my characters. They stay with me everywhere I go.

I don't know why I took to writing the way I did. Almost everyone in my family can draw or paint, like my mom who is a better artist than she gives herself any credit for.

I can draw too but my passion has always been with words. I love the way letters look, the way they sound, how they form together to make words that mean so much more than what they look like on paper.

My mom started me off reading when I was four and I guess that's where all the madness began.

I started to hear voices in my head.

Voices that I heard more louder, clearer than my own. So even at a young age I knew what I was meant to do: write.

I watched the Lifetime movie based on J.K. Rowling's life last night and I cried.

I cried because all she wanted to do was do what she loved to do and people kept telling her it wasn't practical.

I don't like that word. I don't like what it means or how it sounds.

Life is short. It's too short to be practical, to not do what you want to  do just because it might not pay the rent.

I don't know what being an adult is yet, but I do know that I'm going to college next year. I'm majoring in Creative Writing and minoring in sociology. I will go to law school and I will always be a writer.

It's in my bones. In the air that I breathe. I couldn't stop writing even if I tried. Honestly - I think I would go mad if I didn't write.

There's just so much wrong with the world and I have the power to escape. I don't claim to be Harry Potter but my keyboard is my wand, my stories are my spells and incantations.

I want to see something I've written on a shelf one day but I can't let that make me forget why I write.

I have to stop thinking of everything I write as THE book or as a book period. These ideas, these voices in my head are mine, they are my heart and soul.

And that is why I write.

I write because I can't live without them.