When in school, we as children, start by learning the alphabet and then how to write it. Then sentences, paragraphs, pages, essays, dissertations, oh my!

I remember writing about my family and what they did in crayon and scribbled drawings. From that, I’m sure there were more writing projects but I am old (and molding) and don’t remember those.

What I do remember though, is being so fascinated with telling stories via Bratz Dollz and Legos. They always went on some adventure (A monster was the reason my favorite Bratz Doll lost an arm, not the inadequate plastic used to make the doll).

However, from play session to play session things would be forgotten, reset, or just not agreed on how to play. Every kid has different interests – the complexity of relationships could only go so far before I got bored and wanted more action. And once a personality is set into the doll/lego there’s no changing it (it didn’t feel right). Plus, it was hard to play a multitude of different characters all at once. Plus plus, how could I indulge that story itch when the second person playing the other characters wasn’t there?

Luckily, English classes were sure to keep us indulged in reading and writing. So when playing out stories wasn’t enough, writing became the next natural choice. Especially when my drawing skills were still developing and would take much longer to tell the story than writing it would.

After watching many shows about aliens, of course, I needed to write my own alien story. It opened with a train jacking, naturally! But, said train wasn’t a good mark. So the bad guys blew it up. After saving one patron – the main human character – for some reason. Who used a helicopter to escape and fly back to their hideout. An abandoned, dilapidated warehouse – because bad guys who have such a hideout can afford a helicopter; not to mention all the other logistics to that.

Then! Our alien protage, rescues the human and they are bound to travel together to get the human home. Despite the alien having wings and can fly, they choose to travel by normal human means. I mean, the alien was basically a human with wings but came from outer space.

Where the story was heading, I have no clue. But it started something, as since then I started just writing. Creating new stories and collecting ideas. There was a point where I was working on three different stories at once. 

I sat at the family home computer – the old gray tube monitor, to date myself even further – for as long as I could just typing away. Then, my grandpa gave me an even older gray chunky laptop that could not connect to the internet and only could use floppy discs. I managed to get music on it though.

So, instead of fighting for computer time, I could sit and type away on this old laptop. It was amazing. As much as I love how advanced technology has become, I miss the simplicity of being only able to type (or play solitaire) on that old laptop.

I know, I know. I need more self-discipline or I could buy one of those free-write electric typewriters but I’m missing the innocence that came with just writing. I went into a trance, playing make-believe exactly how I wanted, for as long as I wanted. I wrote to get a story out. I had no intention beyond that.

After working on these stories for a while, I was excited to share them. Unfortunately, the person I chose to show wasn’t supportive and made me feel stupid for what I created. I was very sensitive as a kid so I took it hard. I trusted this person’s opinion more than I should have and gave up on continuing to write. I got rid of my work and regret it to this day.

But I missed writing and ideas kept coming to me. I did find my way back to it through interesting means. There’s a separate topic for that, coming later.

If I could tell my younger self anything, it would have been to not listen to that person and keep writing. Every idea, good or bad. It could be changed, or fixed, nothing set in stone. I lost so much time wallowing in someone else’s cruel comments.

What memories do you have when you first started writing? Is there something you’d want to tell your younger self about it?