The Write Way | ✔︎

00 | FOREWORD

     I've been writing for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be, there was always the career in whatever phase I was in, "or a writer." That was a constant. I'd gone through phases where I wondered whether I should become an actress, start a business, or even take up dance, but all of those eventually faded away with my interest, leaving only a passion for word-smithing and telling stories. I'm turning twenty this year and not much has changed.

     Over the years, I not only learned many things about the craft of writing, but also about myself. Joan Didion wrote, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live," and it could not have rung any truer to me than my own name. For example, the stories I choose to tell reflected a lot about which aspects of life fascinated me, and why. Be it romance, mysteries, or the secret zombie apocalypse story my boyfriend and I entertain ourselves with, in every story I write—hell, even in every word I choose—my own life is reflected back to me in all its wonderful, humbling, and nauseating glory.

     If you're reading this, chances are, you're like me. You can spend hours in the bookstore, just looking at things, touching their spines like a chiropractor inspecting an overdue patient. Reading a book, watching a movie, or hell, even just listening to a song stops becoming simply a form of entertainment and transforms into a source of inspiration, stories, and even wonder. There is that ever-present urge to scratch the page with carefully constructed markings (or, alternatively, in a blind fury)—the same one that compelled our ancestors to take the pads of their fingertips and drag it across the cave walls to record their very own existence.

     If you're anything like me, then know that we come from a very long line of succession, all pilgrims of the mind and the soul from which the stories spring forth. George Herbert's poem, "Prayer (I)", puts it succinctly: "Soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage."

     Let this book be a celebration of that. In our writing and in learning, may we continue to look upon the world with starry eyes full of hope and wonder, and pray that we may be lucky enough to string the right words along to hold up a mirror to the world and reveal its truth. Because the first thing I learned about writing is that there are many truths; the key is to figure out which ones are compelling enough to tell.