I was a daydreamer. This used to get me in trouble in class when my teacher caught me gazing out the windows, starry-eyed, caught in my imaginary world. Even in elementary school, I read books and loved pretending. It seemed that’s all we did, us kids who didn’t join in the games unless forced to do so. Our games were to pick parts to play and “be” other people. Two trees standing together on the edge of our playground became someone’s house, a hillside was the other world where the gnomes lived.
Eventually, I started turning my imagination into stories on a page and tucked into notebooks. When we’d get an assignment at school to write something creative, I was so excited about this that I had a hard time narrowing down which direction to take with my story. Should I write something scary? Something from a faraway place in history? Perhaps an imaginary place? So many options.
I don’t remember anyone ever encouraging me per se although I always got As on my writing assignments. And my parents were quick to give me books and author recommendations, as they were both readers. Heck, my dad regularly quoted folks like Rudyard Kipling at the dinner table. Notably, Momma had given me my first full-length novel, Little Women, which she said meant a lot to her and that she and all her sisters had read. I adored it too and found a hero in Jo March.
So I suppose that my first reason to write, even now, is purely for the love of story. I still regularly think up new plot ideas, many of which, I’m sure, will never see the actual page. However, it’s fun and, apparently, the way my mind works.
I started writing when I could barely put sentences together. Back when I was entering the first grade, we were sent overseas to Iran. I started writing letters to my grandmother who lived in Mississippi. My mother helped me by painstakingly spelling almost every single word as I composed and wrote, slowly I’m sure, my messages to her. I desired to communicate.
This wish to communicate is part of why I write. After all, we all need each other and want to reach out and be understood. My confidence in reaching out to convey my thoughts, feelings, and stories has grown tremendously over the years. I now see it as a primary focus of my life due to the strong feeling that I have from God, that I indeed have something of value to share with others. Speak! Write! He says to me. So I am.
And this leads me to the last reason I write - to connect. I not only want to connect with people, which is essentially what communication is, I also want and need to connect to my past and to the next generation.
When I read my Momma’s written words, the ones I’m still finding stuffed in her old books, I’m so filled with thankfulness that she left me something to ponder, her insights for life. I want to leave words on a page for those who will come after me.
So I write for the pure joy of creating stories, the characters I love in places that are both familiar and diverse, in situations we may or may not be acquainted with.
What’s more, I write to connect with you, my reader, to impart something lasting and familiar that we both might share, a thought you might need dropped into your day.
Happy reading and my your day be blessed by God!
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