Rediscovering the Writer Within

The other day I was thinking to myself “When did I start writing? Was it before or after I developed my extreme fondness for reading?”

I’m not really sure, but my perception tells me they manifested at about the same time. Of course as a child I read quite frequently and even with my friends we were always playing and telling stories to each other. Yet, that was not writing. 

The first time I remember writing a story was when I was “talking”, with a friend of mine, through notes we used to put in each other’s mailbox. They were not exactly letters, they were more like the 80’s version of WhatsApp messages, but in handwriting, some were a lot more extensive and there was no shortening or contraction of words, which - by the way - I find it to be one of the most vile and hideous manner of stabbing a language in its written form. 

Anyway, our storytelling game started with a dream, or a nightmare depending on the perspective. Though I think it wasn’t really a nightmare, it was one of those weird dreams in which you know there is someone after you and you are running. But you are not running fast enough, and you have to be faster. So suddenly, the fear and need to run becomes so urgent that you also become something else. Your body starts shifting and you transform into a cheetah, then you are fast. However, you still find yourself unable to get rid of whoever is chasing you, so once more that fearful urgency to run makes you become something else again. Your limbs start shifting and become wings, turning you into a hawk and only then you know and feel that you are free. 

So this was the first story that I told my friend, in those handwritten notes and after a while we gained this dynamic of sharing stories between us. A few years later, I did actually write a story, and yes it was about vampires before they even became a thing. Then later I wrote another story, but this one was about ghosts. Also started writing a few other stories, but I never finished them. I suppose at some point I thought it was a useless effort, that nobody was ever going to read whatever stories I would write. Nobody would even be remotely interested in whatever I had to say, and more importantly why would I share my world with anyone who is not interested? So for some years I just stopped writing. Or, every now and then, I would write a few articles for my blog at the time. 

It took a while, and an enormous amount of reading and of thinking, to find the writer in myself again. To reconnect with my voice and build a new version of it, this time in a different language because… well, who doesn’t like a challenge? 

These stories that I tell, through my characters, are more than words, they are a part of my journey. They remind me that life is about evolving, transforming, and striving to be better. Every story, like every person, has a unique path, and sharing it is not just an act of creation but of courage.