Why I Write

For as long as I could remember, I have always loved telling stories. There was always some story inside of me that was itching to come out, and I grew older; those stories continued to stay with me. 

Growing up, I wasn’t a very outdoorsy child, so when I was a kid, I spent all of my free time inside playing with Polly Pockets in my playroom and watching movies. I created an entire world where I could just let my imagination roam. As I got older, I started to develop characters and stories that were more than just the tropes that I saw on tv, but instead, I began to observe people and create characters based on what I found. 

When I was in eighth grade, I had an English teacher that made my class journal every day. She would give us a basic prompt, mostly about us reflecting on our days or asking us a question of some sort. One day, right before Christmas break, she gave us the prompt Twas the night before Christmas… Most of my classmates created a generic story that they wrote in like five minutes and then talked to their friend that sat next to them. However, I spent almost the entire time creating a fictional story about a girl who got grounded and wasn’t able to go to a Christmas eve party, so she snuck out. I only wrote about five pages of the story before we had to stop journaling, but something sparked inside of me that day, and I knew that I had to continue writing. 

When I entered high school, my mom made me join the yearbook staff. Since I was a freshman, I didn’t really get to do much. I worked on the student section of the book, where I would ask my classmates a question and give me a one or two-word response. That wasn’t very exciting. However, towards the end of the semester, I was given an actual page to do with a couple of my staff mates who were also freshmen. At first, I was extremely nervous, and I didn’t think I was a good writer. But once I started writing my first article, I knew that I had to spend the rest of my life writing. 

I started to spend the majority of my free time writing and creating stories. I’m a very visual person, so I also needed to find an outlet that would help me visualize characters and locations while I was creating them. That’s when I started to play The Sims. One of the reasons I fell in love with The Sims is that I can make it extremely diverse. When I played with my Polly Pockets, I only had a few males and a handful of POC dolls. However, with The Sims, I could create any Sim that I wanted to, and I could actually create incredibly diverse stories. 

I soon started to pay attention to the types of stories that I was reading and learning about in school. I quickly realized that most of the books assigned to me were about men, and they usually only portrayed women as love interests. Even books that had strong female protagonists always had some type of love triangle or love story. I wanted to change that. 

I am still trying to find my voice as a writer. I want to create stories that inspire people to go out and live their dreams and not settle for second best. I want to create stories about things that have happened to me, like coming out or coming to terms with your sexuality and embracing it. I want to create stories that feature strong female leads, but I also want to create stories about men who are a little more feminine, yet they’re okay with that. The world is changing every single day, and we need stories that will reflect this.

An example of this is Love, Victor on Hulu. The show is about a boy named Victor coming to terms with his sexuality after his family moves to Atlanta. The cast is extremely diverse. Victor and his family are Latino, and his little brother is a little more effeminate. I was pleased with how diverse the cast and the story was. However, I was disappointed that the main character was in a heterosexual relationship throughout the first season, I understood why. Everyone’s coming out story is entirely different. It sometimes takes being with the wrong person or gender to realize who they truly are. 

I didn’t fully understand or come to terms with my bisexuality until my senior year of high school. There wasn’t a lot of representation for bisexual characters on television or in books. I remember Miles from the teen drama Degrassi being a huge influence. His coming out storyline started to come into play around the same time that I was coming out. For the longest time, I was different or weird for liking both genders, but thanks to the representation that I had seen on television, I knew that I wasn’t different. There were people in the exact same boat as I was. 

There are many reasons why I write. I write so I can have a voice. I write so that there is more representation in literature. I write so I can so I can’t stories and characters out of my head. And finally, I write because it’s something that I have enjoyed doing for as long as I could remember. I want the next generation of kids to know that it’s okay to be yourself. I don’t want them to be afraid of being queer or transgender. One way that I can help the next generation of kids know that they can be themselves is by making sure they are represented in the media. 

*Cover photo is of my fifth birthday. The year I started creating stories.*