When I was little, and first started reading books of any length, my favorite author was C.S. Lewis. The Narnia Chronicles were books I read over and over. My favorite character from those books was Fledge, the flying horse in The Magician's Nephew.
When I first started writing, at about 8 or 9 years-of-age, I wrote poems. This was the first poem I ever wrote on my own:
Animals live
Animals die
Who is there to cry
When people die
Many will cry
But hardly anyone cries
When an animal dies
This poem was written because I saw how nobody cared about a dog that had been hit by a car and was dying on the road in front of the church we attended one Sabbath. This scene was how my writing voice was born. I saw something that hurt my heart, I could not vocalize or cry about it, so I wrote it down. My writing has followed this pattern ever since. I witnessed or felt something, and I wrote it down.
As I got older, I sometimes wanted to try and write stories like C.S. Lewis wrote. But every time I sat down to write, the words that came out were always autobiographical. I sometimes felt like that meant I was a very selfish person. I felt like I should be able to tell another person's story, or tell a fanciful story to make others happy. I wanted to make up wonderful tales, and transport people to good places. I could not do it, no matter how much I wanted to.
I have, over the years, attempted to turn the words that kept trying to come out of myself into a work of fiction, where names and places and situations were changed up enough that no one would recognize anyone or anything, but the truth would still be there, buried under all of the changes. This never worked. These attempts to disguise my truth were dismal failures, and I knew it, even as I tried to do the writing. I labored over outlines, changing names, making up fictional towns, and finally throwing it all away. I decided I was not meant to write fiction, even though people like J.K. Rowling, and even one of my uncles, do exactly the thing I wish I could do: they create fictional characters and stories in their minds, and are able to communicate those stories in written words.
I know my own voice, now, and realize I was never meant to write fiction, or write books, or write for profit, or even for an audience. I had to write what needed to get outside of me, because it would kill me if it stayed inside. And I had to get it out, even if no one believed me. From my first poem on, the things I have written have been my only voice for the pain I carried.
I'm glad I was not able to write fiction. I'm glad I was given a voice to keep myself alive.
