I’ve been writing since I can remember. I know I wrote stories in elementary school, maybe second or third grade, I even found an old notebook with them. But the story of how I started writing took place a bit later, around 5th grade.
I think I should start by saying that I always believed in science. I accepted the possibility of God being there somewhere, as well as the possibility that there isn’t just one god. But when someone told me that some old man created Earth and humanity, I say “hell no”.
So when I had to attend religion lessons and listen to a woman teach us about the catholic religion and bible as though they were the truest things that have ever existed, I wasn’t happy. Especially when said woman told me that animals didn’t have souls, only humans had, and didn’t accept the argument that humans are animals, too.
Having said that, I was rather bored during religion lessons, but I had a solution to that problem.
I started reading in 3rd or 4th grade when I found out that not all books are boring, for what I owe “Narnia”. Ever since then I always carried a book around. Especially when I had religion lessons.
I always read during religion, not even bothering to hide the fact, and the teacher wasn’t pleased with it. But the teacher told the class to read, she never mentioned which book. So I continued reading.
After a while, I was forced to hide the book under the desk, but that didn’t stop me from reading. Soon, the teacher expected me to read each time we had a lesson and told me to put the book away somewhere visible or into my backpack. She threatened to take my book away if she caught me reading. If I wanted to read, I had to be sneaky, and it worked. For a while.
After the teacher took my book away once or twice, I knew something had to change. Reading was risky if I didn’t want to lose my book and I couldn’t read much anyway, always having to glance at the teacher to see if she was looking my way. No, reading was out of the question.
Fortunately for me, I was a creative kid. I knew that the teacher would catch me drawing (because she did, plenty of times) so I did that only occasionally. But she always wanted me to take notes. So I opened my notebook and started writing. No, not notes, I didn’t pay much attention to the class. I started writing short stories that were enough to entertain me during the dreadful lesson. The teacher was pleased enough to see me writing but she never thought to check what I was writing.
I wrote several short stories and I often illustrated them. I mostly wrote during lessons but that was enough for me, there was plenty of lessons during a day. Then I tried writing longer stories, ones I was hoping would become a book. When my school organised a writing contest, I took part in it (and won second place and a book that became one of my favourites). And I kept writing.
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