My Writing Story, the journey of a teen writer by El Blackden-Rains

By El Blackden-Rains

When I was little, I despised writing. I would do anything and everything within my power to avoid it. And you might as well add reading in there too, because I wasn't a huge fan of that either. I remember when I was in Kindergarten and first grade. I got reading homework almost every night, and would throw fits in the hopes that my mom would let me skip it that night. Spoiler alert: she never did.

It wasn't until second grade that I actually began to enjoy both of those activities. We had moved states the summer between first and second grade, and my mom decided to pull me from school so she could begin homeschooling me. When the following school year began, I was ecstatic to get away from the school that I had been going to and be able to focus more on the things I wanted to learn. At the time, I still didn't like writing or reading, but my mom (as the amazing mother she is) bought me a small book collection to try to get me into reading. This book collection was the Magic Tree House Series. Those books pulled me into the whole world of imagination that I had been missing. I developed a huge love for reading and from that moment on, you could hardly catch me without my nose in a book. By the time I was eight, I had already finished all of the Harry Potter books and was moving on to more advanced books.

The same year that my love for reading began to bloom, so did my love for writing, and again, because of my mom. Honestly, I think I just need to give the credit for even getting into writing in the first place to my mom, for whom without, I would not be in the final stages of a novel right now.

Anyways, part of my school day routine was that every morning, I would have to write one page of a daily journal entry and one page of a fictional story to stretch out over the entire year, along with illustrations. The story that I wrote was called Windy the Northern Saw-whet (pronounced saw-wet) Owl. I chose Windy as the main characters name because she was an owl, and since owls are birds, and birds can fly in the air, I thought Windy was fitting. (I know, creative right?)

That was the first story I ever wrote, and I would write everyday about her adventures of being an owl.

Fast forward to the next year, since I was still home-schooled, my mom had me write another fictional story of my choosing, though, it didn't take as much convincing this time around. I eagerly jumped at the opportunity and quickly developed a story about a dog named Daisy, who was the cousin of an already existing character named Piper.

Long story short, Piper was a small, fluffy, Pomeranian who my mom and I made up together years before, and I had decided to make Piper a cousin!

After that, I wrote a little here and there, but nothing too crazy, as I was more into reading at the time than I was with writing. Time went by and I still didn't write much of anything, until January of 2017.

I had joined a very small private school and everyone in the school was working on creating a small school newspaper. They needed someone to write a short story column each month, and when no one else volunteered, I stepped up, thinking that it may be fun to write a story. I still remember being so excited about my story and being able to have it in our little newspaper, that I asked if I could continue to write the short story column. As the weeks went by, I started writing more on my free time; doing writing role plays with my friends, writing fan-fiction and other short stories, submitting works in contests, joining a writer’s group at one of the local libraries, and began writing my first novel, City Seven.

Since then, I’ve learned many lessons about writing. I’ve connected to other authors, gone to youth writing conferences and even started my own teen writer’s group. As of this month (July, 2019), I am still in the process of finishing editing my novel, and we should be working on getting it published very soon after I finish editing.

There is so much left to learn in the world of writing, and I can’t wait to gather up every last bit of that knowledge so that I can grow both as a writer, and as a student, learning about everything having to do with the art of creative writing. And on that note, I must bring this wonderful blog post to a close, so thank you to all who have helped and supported me on my writing journey, and may everyone have a great rest of your day!