Writer Story

English is not my first language. I was the firstborn child of Mexican immigrants. My father understood some English, but my mother did not.

When it was time for me to go to school, I struggled terribly. I was always very frustrated and depressed that I couldn't keep up with the other kids. But it galvanized me like nothing else. I didn't want to be left behind, so I doubled my efforts, memorizing rules of English and practicing my writing every night. At the wee age of six years old, I promised myself I would outdo every single classmate before I finished grade school.

As I learned English, so did my parents. And in turn, it made it easier for my siblings now that they had a big sister to blaze the way.

That was the first hurdle of many.

Since creative writing was still too difficult for me, I concentrated on drawing and became pretty good at a very young age. It was the only real way I had for expressing myself. Even back then, I had an overwhelming need to communicate what was inside me.

Every year, my English improved and so did my spelling. Before I finished grade school, I had won the state spelling bee, beating out a longtime rival and the class favorite for champion. In my mind, I had finally made it. Now it was time to find a new challenge, and that's the first time I ever consciously wrote a story all my own.

Typical for me, it was SF and it was a spoof on the fledgling Apollo mission. It was about Apollo 124 and an astronaut who'd rather eat than watch the control board during a docking procedure. Houston had a problem long before the infamous lines were spoken during the Apollo 13 mission.

It became an instant hit and it was passed around to several other grades. I was shocked that people loved it so much. Who knew I could write--let alone be funny? Certainly not me. I just wrote what I wanted to read.

Ironically, I still didn't pursue writing despite my early "fame". I always volunteered if someone needed an article for the school newspaper or a company newsletter, but I never wrote of my own volition.

Slowly, almost imperceptively, I found myself writing more and more. But I wasn't a writer. No, not me. I convinced myself of that until one day when I wrote a story that was burning inside me. When I finished, I discovered to my shock--I had a novel!

Without realizing it, I had turned into a writer.

Michelangelo once said that his marble figures were buried inside the massive slabs of stone. All he did was chip away the excess and release them from their shrouds.

Maybe like Michelangelo's statues, the writer was inside me all along. I just had to chip her out, one story at a time.