Have you ever had a Defining Moment? One of those moments in life that you *know* is important, even as it’s happening – a moment that changes you forever?
I still remember my first. I was seven years old, riding in the car with my mom and my younger brother, when it hit me.
“Mom,” I said. “Mom! I have something to tell you.”
“Mm?” my mom said, her eyes on the road. “What’s that, sweetheart?”
“I like something *even more* than reading!” I said.
This was an important announcement. My brother was only 4 at the time, but even he was astonished by it. As everyone in my family knew, I loved reading more than anything else in life.
“I like writing even better,” I said, and I felt everything shift into place inside me. “That’s what I’m going to be,” I said. “I’m going to be a writer.”
My mom and brother may no longer remember that conversation, but I’ll never forget it. It was my first Defining Moment, and it’s stayed true for my entire life. Before then, I’d had all sorts of ideas for what I might be as an adult – an astronomer? an astronaut? a paleontologist? But from that moment onward, I was a girl with a mission: I was going to be a professional writer.
I tried all sorts of different angles. First, because I thought short stories were too hard, I decided to write poetry. Well. I can’t say that worked out too well. I did have one uplifting success – I sold a poem to a kids’ magazine and was thrown into bliss (and excitement – I was going to be paid *$14.00*!) – but then the magazine went out of business without publishing my poem or even paying me. *Sigh*. Luckily, by then I was beginning to realize that I wasn’t a very good poet anyway…and as wonderful as good poetry is, it’s never been my favorite thing to read.
So I turned back to fiction, which was what had sucked me into writing in the first place, and I realized the truth: writing stories *is* hard…but it’s also magic. I fell in love with books when I was tiny, fell in love with the amazement of getting to lie down on the grass next to the lilac bushes in my own back yard and be transplanted to a whole different world, anywhere the author wanted to take me. But writing – well, my seven-year-old self was right: writing really is even better. When I write, I get to write the books that I wish were on the shelves already: the books I most want to read. And that’s the most magical experience of all.
What about you guys? Have you ever had one of those Defining Moments, when you had a major, life-changing realization? And has it still stayed true for you?
Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson: Most Improper Magick
“…writing stories *is* hard…but it’s also magic.”
AMEN!
I think of writing as magic too. Closest that anyone can get to being a wizard. But with slightly more wrist strain.
I like the term Defining Moment. I had the same kind of moment as a kid too and never wavered.
Fiction is also my first love.
“When I write, I get to write the books that I wish were on the shelves already: the books I most want to read.” That’s exactly why I write, too.
“Closest that anyone can get to being a wizard. But with slightly more wrist strain.” – That would make a fabulous slogan for a T-shirt or a mug! I would definitely buy it. :)
Thanks for the comments, guys!
It’s awesome that you still remember that! I started writing fiction ’seriously’ at 7, too, but at that point I had no idea how the world worked and my aspiration was to have a horse farm (snort).
There is a tremendous power in having discovered writing for oneself, I think, and not having it introduced as a school topic or whatever. I can remember scribbling as fast as I could, page after page, at that young age. No English teacher could kill it for me after that, and some of them really tried!
I love it how you just took matters into your own hands, and kept going.
How cool that we were the same age! And I think you’re so right about the power of discovering writing for yourself: it’s automatically under your own control so much more than if you’re doing it for a teacher.
I’m just an amateur, and have no clue if I will ever be able to make it into a living, but I feel like I should share this even though I’m still a little fish.
When I changed my college major I changed my life. I was studying to be a music educator, and I discovered that while I love touching lives, I don’t particularly like teaching very much. So I changed my major to just generalized music, tied up my loose ends, moved home with my mom and started working a part-time job before I got married. It was around that time I started writing down an idea for a story I’d had simmering in my brain for a few years. Before I knew it I was obsessed, doing planetary orbit calculations and research in genetics and a whole slew of other things to make it really believable. And then National Novel Writing Month 2008 came along, and I told myself to get serious.
When I got past page three or so, I realized that I was already there, seeing the world I had created with these characters I adored making lives for themselves the best way that they could. And I realized that I wanted to write; not just for others, but for myself. And then, as if to tell me that I’d finally found my calling, my aunt read (most embarrassingly at my wedding reception) a poem that I had written when I was six years old. Something had clicked into place inside me, and who was I to deny myself that? Now I’m just a slave to my imagination, and I haven’t looked back.
Colleen, what a wonderful story! It feels like such a gift to recognize your vocation that way.
I think I’ve gone through too many things I wanted to be to really have a ‘moment’ (but writing was always a part of it or somewhere on th list actually)… I’m sorry they never published your poem, but that’s great that you got that close!
Thanks Lucile! And I love that writing has always been a part of your self-definition.