She used to dream of carriages drawn by miniature horses on the grounds of her most frequently visited ski hill.

She imagined that her family had bought the whole place, and she was free to roam. She believed she would have gotten miniature horses rather than practical full-size ones. She came to the conclusion that she would take the largest part of the ski lodge to be her room if she ever lived there. She was encouraged by her friend and her saying that they would climb through the air vents and rafters on the ceiling.

She dreamt of a world outside her reach while her head rested along the frosted ice of her car’s window. She would stare into the horizon as she came up with the perfect world on her way home from the ski hill.

When it rained, she watched the raindrops speed down her window from her car seat. She envisioned them as racers. They were given names and stories inside of a complex plot. A simple drop of water from above was suddenly a girl trying to catch up to her family and friends.

Her whole life, stories have been an escape.

Before she ever thought of her measly brain as that of a writer, she pictured impossible circumstances in her own life. She wound tales of love and fame from her adolescent brain. 

Her imaginative thoughts became entangled in each other like an ever-growing vine up a Tudor-style house. 

The familiar stance of 26 letters on bound paper gave her everlasting ideas. She took bits and pieces from her favorite books to make worlds of her own. The parts that stuck with her the most through her surplus of reading were buds on her thought-vine. The words became ingrained in her brain. 

Black strokes of the 26 characters that filled up her life filed themselves neatly in her brain filing cabinets that she imagined she had.

As one may grow a humorous spirit into their personality, she grew words. Words abruptly became a trait that she was known for. 

When her life grew bigger, her humor waned, her stress heightened and her opinions were more pronounced, words stuck around.

Words of adventure raced through her brain. Rick Riordan was her lifeline for years. She hung on his every phrase through Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Heroes of Olympus, The Trials of Apollo, and her first exposure to his writing, The Kane Chronicles. She drowned in Harry Potter soon after, but always kept a higher affinity for the larger world of Percy Jackson and the Olympians and its counterparts.

She lost herself in the stories of the world that authors created in their heads. 

And suddenly, her world, internally and externally, changed. 

She began imagining lives for characters other than herself. She began to type quick story plot synopsizes and ferociously type. If writing worlds was food, then she was ravenous. She never finished a meal though. 

Now, she sees it as her trying different dishes to decide her favorite to eat fully. 

She eats slowly but she’s determined to finish it nonetheless. 

She’s ready to finally create her own world beneath the sore tips of her fingers and see the 26 letters she’s maneuvered become a life of their own.